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The Philosophy of History 

By S. S. HEBBERD 



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(From the Chicago Tribune") 

"How so simple a thought as this can be carried out as a law of 
interpretation in the study of the great distinctive, historic civilization 
as that of India, the classical, the medieval, the Reformation, the genesis 
of science, modern art and morality, and the social revolution since the 
reformation is what the author has attempted to show in this remarkably 
lucid, cogent, and suggestive book." 

"It is, in fact, one of the most penetrating and illuminating philo- 
sophical-historical essays that have appeared for a long while. And its 
style indicates, to an uncommon degree, not only strong mastery of the 
theme, but a singularly fine self-mastery, which holds the author so 
perfectly to his single aim. One who reads intelligently this book, 
whether or not he accept fully the theory, will get a clew to modern 
thought and modern history he did not have, at least so clearly, before." 

(From The Reformed Church Review) 

"If this book had the imprint of Berlin or Oxford upon its title-page 
it would command immediate attention. The author himself feels that 
it is heavily handicapped by the very grandeur of its pretensions. . . . 
After reading a few pages one is captivated by the simlicity, the direct- 
ness and the penetration of the author. He makes you think. Whether 
you agree with him or not you cannot deny that you are confronted by a 
man who has read widely, pondered his material carefully and thought 
clearly. The work deserves far more popularity than it appears to have 
received. 

"... The reader is naturally afraid of a man who has found a 
key, especially one that will explain all the mysteries of civilization. 
Yet it must be conceded that the writer pleads his cause with remarkable 
ingenuity, and with his striking antitheses and epigrammatic sentences 
throws new light upon his subject at many points. If he does nothing 
else he sets one thinking along the broad deep lines which are co- 
extensive with the breadth and depth of the racial movement itself. 

"... The book abounds in keen distinctions like these. They may 
raise problems rather than solve them, but a production that does even 
that is well worth reading." 



(From Rev. N. McGee Waters, Pastor Tompkins Ave. Cong. Church, 
Brooklyn, New York) 

"I am not certain yet whether I am satisfied that you have found 
the solution of the riddle. Your solution at first strikes one as too 
simple — but so are all the great laws simple. Anyhow, for horizon, 
inspiration and outlook and as a compendium of learning it is a book 
of the first rank. I am going to read it again." 

" 'The Philosophy of History' is a timely work and one that will be 
sought after by all students and lovers of history. In this work the 
author has given to the world a book that should bring him fame as a 
reward for a lifetime of labor spent in its preparation." — Southern Star, 
Atlanta, Ga. 

"A book into which a strong thinker has put a large part of the 
forces of his life is not to be set aside lightly. And this book will repay 
careful study. . . . These are the merest hints of the scheme of 
thought which the writer of this book has developed with much wealth 
of historical illustration and fine philosophical insight." — The Christian 
Century. 

"There is very much that is weighty as well as ingenious in your 
speculations upon the Philosophy of Art. I have seen no better theory 
of the beautiful than yours." — C. E. Norton, LL.D., L.H.D., Prof, of 
Art in Harvard University. 

"This book is a noble contribution to the philosophy of history. We 
feel convinced that it will find its way to readers of every class." — 
New York World. 

"This book is abundant evidence of the high philosophical ability of 
the author. Its characterization of artistic, industrial and moral tenden- 
cies is capital." — Wm. D. Hyde, D.D., LL.D., Fres't Bowdoin College. 

"The style is as clear as a crystal, while the ideas are singularly 
marked by modesty, manliness and affluent suggestiveness." — Christian 
Era. 

"Your book seems to me an epoch-making book. It is the clearest, 
most profound and most rational exposition of the science of thinking 
that I have ever seen. I have studied Lotze, . . . and many others, 
but I have really got a better outlook into thought and life, a firmer 
foundation for faith and reason in your little book than from them all." 
— Rev. John Faville, D.D., Peoria, 111. 

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of the distinction between idealism and realism and apply it to the 
various fields of human life, and especially to human history, seems to 
me of fascinating interest. I do not know when I have read more 
suggestive pages in the line of the philosophy of history than in your 
book."— Pres't G. A. Gates, D.D., LL.D., Iowa College. 

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I have made large use of it, especially under the subject of perception 
and consciousness." — Ex-Pres't E. H. Merrell, D.D., Ripon College. 



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sweep. I know it is the finest, freshest and most original putting that I 
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"Your chapter upon Art is delightful." — Prof. C. M. Tyler, Cornell 
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sive account of the progress of civilization within so small a compass 
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"A tremendous task is attempted here. . . . The book must be read 
to gain the author's conception and is sure to repay the reading." — 
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" 'The Philosophy of History' is a carefully wrought essay in which 
the attempt is made to establish a single law of thought which will 
successfully explain the course of human development. . . . Taking 
this fundamental law as a key, the author applies it in turn to the doors 
of human history and makes it open them all in succession from the 
contemplative systems of Indian thought to the industrial conflicts of the 
nineteenth century. The book cannot be even summarized here, but it 
may be said that its treatment of old problems is fresh, logical and in 
many respects convincing. Especially is this true of the chapters on 
classical and medieval art in which the fundamental law is admirably 
illustrated." — The Dial. 



izmo, 307 Pages, Cloth Bound 
Price, Postpaid, $1.50 



MASPETH PUBLISHING HOUSE 
77 Milton Street, Borough oi Queens, New York 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
THE FUTURE 



By S. S. HEBBERD 

Author of " Philosophy of History," " The Secret of Christianity'* 
"The Science of Thought," Etc. 




MASPETH PUBLISHING HOUSE 
77 MILTON STREET, BOROUGH OF QUEENS, NEW YORK 

1911 



J$ 



*v 



Copyright, 1911, 
By S. S. HEBBERD. 



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PREFACE 

This book has cost me more than half a century 
of toil and the loss of most things that men chiefly 
desire. And still it is very imperfect. How, indeed, 
could it be otherwise, since I have had to cut my 
way through a wilderness, aided only by the errors 
of those who have preceded me? But, as I have 
shown in my "Philosophy of History," we are on 
the verge of a great transition. The Protestant age 
of dissent and division has exhausted itself, and has 
now little of value to offer us. And so I send forth 
my book, hoping that despite its imperfections, it 
may serve to foreshadow the better time that is com- 
ing. 

I am encouraged too by what Kant says in the 
Scholia to his Prolegomena : "All transitions from a 
tendency to its contrary pass through the stage of 
indifference, and this moment is most dangerous for 
an author, but the most favorable for the science. 
For when party-spirit has died out by a total dis- 
solution of former connections, minds are in the 
best state to listen to several proposals for an or- 
ganization according to a new plan." 

S. S. Hebberd. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Nature of Thought ... i 

II. Causality 10 

III. Abstraction and Relation ... 28 

IV. The New Realism 43 

V. Space 69 

VI. Time 80 

VII. The Concept 93 

VIII. Judgment 113 

IX. Induction 127 

X. The Existence of God .... 148 

XL Freedom 166 

XII. Demonstration of the Soul's Ex- 
istence 185 



CHAPTER I 

THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 

Section i. The Fundamental Principle 

The principle upon which I seek to found a new 
philosophy is this: The sole, essential function of 
all thinking, as contrasted with feeling, is to dis- 
criminate between cause and effect. 

It is a simple thesis ; but it will not be disparaged 
on that account by any one who knows the history of 
inductive science. Such an one will remember that 
the greatest discoveries have always borne this 
stamp of simplicity. The secrets of Nature always 
seem open and evident when once we have found 
them out. But it is not so easy to find them out and 
verify them. It is far easier to plod along in the old 
ruts of tradition and error; or to revolve, like one 
lost in the woods, in circles of verbiage and 
ambiguity. 

But your thesis, it may be said, is nothing new. It 
is but a revamping of Schopenhauer's reduction of 
all the Kantian categories to that of causality. But 
such an objection would be both shallow and false. 
Some of the Pythagoreans anticipated dimly the 
Copernican discovery, but they never verified their 
vague conjectures; and the contrast between my doc- 
trine and Schopenhauer's is much wider and deeper 
than that, (a) For he confined his view to processes 
of the understanding, which for him — as also for 



2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Kant, Hegel and the rest — was but a part of the in- 
tellect; and a very inferior, rudimentary part, the 
source of all error and deception, (b) Nor did 
Schopenhauer even attempt to prove the reality of 
causation ; he never questioned Kant's view of it as 
but a logical necessity, an arbitrary compulsion 
forced upon us by the deceptive understanding, (c) 
Above all, he did not see that this universal scope 
of the causal concept could be converted into a proof 
that it was no mere figment of the mind ; to him it 
was merely "subjective. " In fine, Schopenhauer 
simply carried the Kantian philosophy one stage 
farther on — into that pessimism which, as the his- 
tory of India so painfully shows, is the inevitable 
outcome of every fully developed theory of Maya or 
illusion. 

My doctrine is the exact opposite of all this. For 
its main design is to find an ultimate, universal cri- 
terion of truth, and thus overcome the skepticism 
lurking in both the materialistic and idealistic modes 
of modern thought. 

Section 2. Hume's Problem 

Modern philosophy is tormented by one very 
grievous malady. Its criticism has destroyed the old 
criteria of truth, but has never been able to put any- 
thing else in their place ; it has torn down, but knows 
not how to rebuild. Even through all the storm and 
stress of the eighteenth century, the primary convic- 
tions of mankind were conserved, at least for the 
majority, by the doctrine of innate ideas or intuitions. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 3 

But Kant completely wrecked the intuitional method 
of defending truth. The very fact that all men were 
somehow mysteriously compelled to accept, without 
any proof, certain convictions concerning time, 
space, substance, cause, etc., was made a ground for 
discrediting these convictions. His criticism has 
never been adequately answered. And for more 
than a century now, our most elementary convic- 
tions, moral as well as religious, have been hanging 
in cloud-land, true castles in the air. Thus modern 
philosophy, having no firm foundation, has become 
a chaos of dispute, paradox and vain subtleties. 

My contention is that philosophy can be rescued 
from its evident state of decadence and chaos only 
by finding some way of solving Hume's famous 
problem of causality. In the failure of Kant and all 
his successors down to the present day to solve that 
problem has been the main source of trouble. Think- 
ers have naturally tended to ignore, to shove aside 
a principle that seemed to mock at all their efforts 
to solve or understand it. Many of them seem to 
have nourished a spite against it. Thus Royce says 
solemnly: "The unhappy slavery of metaphysicians 
of the past to the conception of causation has been 
responsible for some of the most fatal misfortunes 
of religion and of humanity." 1 

Not having any fear of such a slavery, I propose 
in this volume to prove inductively that the sole es- 
sential function of all thinking is to discriminate 
between cause and effect ; in other words, that there 

1 The World and the Individual, I. p. 444. 



4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

is no known form of thought which is not ultimately 
reducible into an assertion of cause and effect. If 
I succeed, then plainly to cancel causality is to efface 
all distinction between truth and falsehood, and thus 
to render all thinking logically impossible. The 
argument is in fact a reductio ad absurdum in the 
completest form imaginable. The geometer proves 
his theorem by showing that its denial would logi- 
cally lead to the denial of some universally accepted 
principle, and would therefore be absurd; I prove 
my theorem by showing that its denial would invali- 
date all principles, efface all distinctions, in fine 
would involve the utter extinction of thought. 

Thus we shall reach the solution of Hume's prob- 
lem, which, according to Hoffding, 1 "Kant failed to 
solve and is indeed insoluble." Hume argued that 
causation was only the more or less uniform succes- 
sion of phenomena in space and time. But I shall 
prove that each word in this definition is in its es- 
sence a declaration of causality. The relations sev- 
erally indicated by each of the words used — more, 
less, uniform, succession, phenomena, space, time, of, 
in, and — all rest primarily upon causal relations; 
and if the latter were eliminated, the words would 
lose all their meaning. Thus in the very act of deny- 
ing causality, Hume is compelled to affirm it over 
and over again. 

Section j. The Law of Knowledge 
My fundamental theorem carries with it a very 



'History of Modern Philosophy, II. p. 58. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 5 

obvious corollary. If all thinking is essentially a 
relating of cause and effect, it manifestly follows 
that a cause cannot be known except through its ef- 
fects, nor an effect apart from its cause. 

Simple and self-evident as this corollary appears, 
it is of the utmost value for the unraveling of those 
entanglements in which speculation is perpetually 
involving itself. As we proceed in our exposition 
we shall see how many far-famed conceptions in 
philosophy are but half thoughts, mutilated and 
worthless because they are attempts to conceive a 
cause apart from its effects or an effect apart from 
its cause. Many a dispute has lasted for ages, because 
one party was stubbornly clinging to a half-thought 
and the other party to the complementary half, one 
emphasizing the cause and the other the effect. 
Take, for example, the most famous and persistent 
of all these controversies, that between the Eleatic 
and the Heracleitean school, the former claiming 
that Being was one, indivisible, immutable, while 
all appearance of change or motion was due to the 
deceptiveness of the senses; the latter maintaining 
that everything is in constant flux, forever trans- 
forming itself, its nature a consuming fire. In fine, 
one school sees the uniformity of cause or causal 
processes, the other sees only the effects or changes. 
And yet this dispute outlasted ancient philosophy. 
Plato was puzzled by it, as his Parmenides plainly 
shows. And in the Aristotlean theory of knowledge 
it is again apparent as "a contradiction of which the 
results run through the entire system of Aristotle." 



6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Turn now to Hegelianism, the most vigorous of 
all philosophies now extant — unless, indeed, you 
count "pragmatism" as a philosophy. Hegel begins 
with that equation which has astonished so many, 
Pure Being=o. And yet there is no need of aston- 
ishment; the equation is but a bald truism. For to 
Hegel pure being means only an effect isolated from 
or unrelated to any cause, or as Wallace puts it: 
"We do not mean something which is, but mere is, 
the bare fact of Being, without any substratum. The 
degree of condensation or development when sub- 
stantive and attribute co-exist has not yet come. 
The terms and forms of Being float as it were freely 
in the air ; or to put it more correctly, one passes into 
the other. . . . This Being is immediate, i.e., it 
contains no reference binding it with anything be- 
yond itself, but stands forward boldly and nakedly 
as if alone; and if hard pressed it turns over into 
something else." 1 Now, as a matter of course, such 
Being as that — for example, a motion apart from 
anything that moves — is nothing. In fine the whole 
first book of the Logic is occupied with an inherent 
absurdity, a mutilated half -thought, to wit, effects 
that have no cause. And to discover therein para- 
doxes and self-contradictions naturally becomes an 
easy task. 

To quote from Wallace again : "If the first branch 
of Logic was the sphere of simple Being in a point 
or series of points, the second is that of difference 
and discordant Being broken up in itself." 2 It is 

1 Logic of Hegel, Prolegomena, p. cxix. 

2 Ibid., p. cxxi. 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 7 

enough here to note two indisputable facts. First, 
the whole drift of the second book is to identify the 
effect with its cause ; thus we have a series of trans- 
formations of causes without any real effects. Sec- 
ond, in the end all causation is discarded as self-con- 
tradictory and unreal. 

The first and second books, then, vividly illustrate 
my Law of Knowledge, the impossibility of know- 
ing effects apart from their causes or causes apart 
from their effects. The third book, based upon the 
conjecture that the universe is an organism, illus- 
trates the straits to which a thinker is driven after 
he has discarded the conception of causality. 

Section 4. The Relativity of Knowledge 

But there is a possible objection that must be con- 
sidered. It may be said that even if I succeed in 
proving that the sole essential function of all think- 
ing is to affirm cause and effect, I have not escaped 
the toils of the Kantian subjectivism. Nothing 
would be proved except that as our minds are con- 
stituted, it is impossible to think otherwise ; but other 
beings with minds differently constituted may think 
in quite a different fashion. Cause and effect may, 
after all, have no actual reality outside our fallible 
human minds. 

But understand thoroughly the doctrine here pre- 
sented, and your objection vanishes; this question of 
relativity, which has stood unanswered since the 
dawn of philosophy, is instantly answered. For my 
doctrine sweeps aside all that swarm of chimeras — 



8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

such as innate ideas, intuitions, a-priori categories, 
etc. — that heretofore have made relativity seem so 
plausible. Dismiss, then, this tangled mass of un- 
proved, impossible assumptions. Conceive thought 
or reasoning just as science conceives everything 
else — that is, functionally. For, as I propose to 
demonstrate, the sole essential function of thought 
or reason is to discriminate between cause and ef- 
fect; and from this functional point of view the 
question of relativity becomes superlatively absurd. 
If you imagine thought or reason after the Kantian 
style, that is, as a mere medley of innate ideas, or 
a- priorities, flung together at random, no one knows 
how, whence or why — having no object except to 
engender false appearances — then indeed relativity 
becomes highly plausible. It seems almost certain 
that there must be somewhere some higher order of 
beings endowed with a higher type of thought or 
reason, less complicated and cumbersome, leading to 
something else than universal imposture. But aban- 
don this preposterous and immoral scheme. In- 
terpret thought or reason as you would anything 
else — according to its known function. Then, if I 
prove, as I certainly shall, that the sole, essential 
function of thinking is to discriminate between cause 
and effect, the question about relativity becomes 
simply ridiculous. For it is to ask whether there 
may not be some higher order of reason which is not 
reason and contradicts reason. It would not be a 
whit sillier to ask whether there may not be some 
higher kind of motion which is not motion? Or 



THE NATURE OF THOUGHT 9 

some higher kind of a triangle that has four or forty 
sides ? 

Furthermore I cite Kant himself, the great high- 
priest of relativity, as an unwilling witness to the 
truth of my doctrine. For in trying to prove uni- 
versal relativity, he is forced to make an exception 
of causality. I do not refer merely to the well- 
known fact that he describes the thing in itself as the 
cause of the matter of our sensations. I refer to the 
much broader fact that he describes the whole 
phenomenal universe as caused mainly by the pe- 
culiar constitution of the mind. He forgets that ac- 
cording to his doctrine, causality is merely relative 
and therefore can tell him nothing concerning the 
true constitution of the mind. In fine, he uses the 
idea of cause as real in order to prove that it is not 
real. In the very act of denying causality, he affirms 
it. 

Note finally that we are here concerned only with 
the alleged relativity of the causal relation. Other 
supposed relativities will be discussed later on; and 
they will be found to vanish, one by one, before this 
functional view of thought or reason as a relating 
of cause and effect. The one ruinous defect in mod- 
ern philosophy is that it is not "a city which hath 
foundations." It hangs in the air with nothing un- 
derlying it but such obsolete superstitions as innate 
ideas, intuitions, postulates, a-priori necessities of 
thought, etc. It needs the insight which Archimedes 
had long ago : "Give me a place to stand on, and I 
can move the world." 



CHAPTER II 

CAUSALITY 

Section i. Sequence 

The most surprising feature in Hume's famous 
polemic against the belief in causality is the extreme 
tenuity and emptiness of the arguments he was 
called upon to meet. He spoke the simple truth 
when he declared that "every argument which has 
been produced for the necessity of a cause is falla- 
cious and sophistical." Take, for example, Hobbes's 
proof, which is specially notable, because he more 
than any contemporary writer bases his philosophy 
upon the conception of causality. It is as follows : 
All the points of time and place in which we can 
suppose any object to begin to exist are in them- 
selves equal; and unless there be some cause which 
is peculiar to one time and one place, and which by 
that means determines and fixes their existence, it 
must remain in eternal suspense; and the object can 
never begin to be for want of something to fix its 
beginning." Hume answers to that: "But I ask is 
there any more difficulty in supposing the time and 
place to be fixed without a cause than to suppose the 
existence to be determined in that manner?" 1 Then 
Hume turns to the proofs given by other distin- 
guished writers, and answers them with equal 



1 Hume's Philosophical Works, Edinburgh, 1826, II. pp. 111- 
112. 



CAUSALITY 1 1 

promptitude and ease. Indeed, his task of refutation 
seems so easy that one wonders why it had not been 
accomplished long before. Evidently there had been 
little serious attention given to this most crucial of 
all philosophic questions. Hume's victory was due 
largely to the fact that like a skillful general, he had 
taken the enemy unawares. And even in this inat- 
tention we may see some confirmation of my thesis ; 
the concept of causation was so intimately bound 
up with the whole process of thinking that no one 
dreamed of doubting its validity. They took it for 
granted. Hume himself, as has often been noted, 
unconsciously took it for granted in the very at- 
tempt to contradict it. 

But many other obscuring agencies, besides inat- 
tention, have darkened the conception of causality. 
The most potent of these agencies perhaps, espe- 
cially since Kant's day, has been the ethical impulse. 
The pivot upon which the Kantian criticism turns 
is the assumption that if causation cannot be proved 
to be phenomenal or illusory, then ' liberty and with 
it morality must yield to the mechanism of nature." 
But that view will be considered in my last chapters, 
wherein I hope to show that the demonstration of 
freedom and morality is made possible only by the 
principle of causality rightly understood. Deferring 
that question then, I turn to perplexities that have 
sprung from the development of modern science. 
And first of all, to the degradation of causality into 
mere sequence. 

(i) There are three distinct objections to this se- 



12 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

quence theory, each one of which is sufficient to 
overthrow it. First there is Reid's well-known ob- 
jection that the invariable succession of day and 
night does not prove that the one is the cause of the 
other. To that, so far as I know, no serious or sat- 
isfactory reply has ever been made. Mill shoves it 
aside with the curious remark that the conjunction 
of day and night "is in some sort accidental." . . . 
"Invariable sequence is not synonymous with causa- 
tion unless the sequence, besides being invariable, is 
unconditional." 1 In other words, unless the succes- 
sion is caused by something else. That obviously is 
to surrender the very point which Mill was trying 
to dispute. Bosanquet's reply is still more oblique 
and obscure, a palpable "darkening of counsel" be- 
hind a host of words and irrelevancies. 2 Adam- 
son's answer is that increasing experience enables us 
to discriminate between two kinds of succession. 3 
But did the stupidest of savages ever consider day 
to be the cause of night or night the cause of day ? 

(2) Reid's objection then is unanswerable. To 
it I add two others both my own. The first of these 
is my proof that sequence or succession implies 
time ; and that the conception of time is made possi- 
ble and intelligible only through the prior conception 
of cause. But for that proof I must refer the reader 
to my chapter upon Time. 

(3) My other objection is that the uniform se- 



1 Logic, Bk. III. ch. 5, § 5. 

2 Bosanquet, Logic. 

'Development of Modern Philosophy, p. 320. 



CAUSALITY 13 

quence of events does not even indicate a relation of 
cause and effect between them. It indicates, rather, 
that the successive events are both effects of the same 
cause. In the revolutions of a wheel, for instance, 
one revolution is not the cause of the succeeding one, 
and that the cause of the next, and so on indefi- 
nitely; but all the revolutions are successive effects 
of a common cause unlike any one of them. In fine, 
sequence, instead of being synonymous with, is not 
even a sign of any relation of cause and effect be- 
tween the sequent objects. But one error leads to 
another. And modern philosophy having, under the 
guidance of Hume and Kant, started out on a false 
path — the minifying of causality — has been led from 
error to error into a wild tangle of blunders and per- 
plexities. Some of the chief of these errors I shall 
consider in the next section. 

Section 2. Causal Processes 
One of the most signal of scientific triumphs has 
been the discovery of the marvelous complexity of 
causal processes. It has revolutionized our view of 
Nature compared with the ancient view. In the 
philosophy of Aristotle and of antiquity in general, 
each effect or change is conceived as the product of 
some single cause — either of some substantial thing 
or else of some "occult quality," some force or power 
hidden within that thing. If anything weighed 
much, there was an occult quality of heaviness 
within it ; if it weighed little, there was within it an 
occult quality of "levity." This view prevailed far 
down into modern times, and was one of the chief 



14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

stumbling blocks to scientific advance. Chemistry, 
for example, until almost the close of the eighteenth 
century was prevented from becoming a science by 
the doctrine of phlogiston — a strange substance pos- 
sessing the still stranger quality of levity or negative 
weight. But science has finally changed all that. 
It has learned that an effect is the product not of a 
single, unitary cause, but of a vast complex of in- 
teracting agencies, of a causal process with a multi- 
tude of factors. 

But the older, pre-scientific view still lingers ; for 
it was long ago crystallized into the usages of com- 
mon speech and grammar; insensibly it molds our 
thought — all the more, the less we are aware of it. 
Hence there is a constant, bewildering conflict be- 
tween two quite disparate modes of thinking. On 
the one side the crude primitive view of the single 
cause; on the other, the scientific, verifiable view of 
the causal process with its host of factors. 

This conflict is largely responsible for the con- 
fusion and bewilderment so evident in modern phi- 
losophy. Hegel's Dialectic especially is but an artful 
display of the countless "contradictions" that may 
readily be evolved by passing back and forth from 
the crude popular view of cause as single to the sci- 
entific view of it as a causal process, an infinite com- 
plex of interwoven factors. But in English phi- 
losophy we find a more familiar example in the long 
controversy concerning the plurality of causes. How 
happens it that the same effect may issue from the 
most dissimilar causes — death, for instance, from 



CAUSALITY 15 

drowning, or shooting, or disease, etc. ? Very curi- 
ous solutions have been given. Thus one recent 
writer says : "The total effect in each case is never 
mere death, but death in some one special shape. A 
man who is shot and a man who is drowned are both 
dead ; but one is dead with the special symptoms of 
death by drowning, the other with those of death by 
shooting." 1 But Mill long ago suggested a less fan- 
tastic solution than that, in fact, one very near the 
truth. "From the different causes of the same ef- 
fect," he says, "we may be able to ascend to some 
one cause which is the operative circumstance in 
them all. Thus it might and perhaps will be discov- 
ered that in the production of heat by friction, per- 
cussion, chemical action, etc., the ultimate source 
is one and the same." 2 

Thus in a dim, tentative way, Mill had caught a 
glimpse of the greatest of scientific revelations — the 
principle that an effect is the product, not of a single 
cause, but of a complex causal process combining 
many co-operating factors. Mill lived to see his 
prophecy concerning the theory of heat completely 
fulfilled. But he never fully developed the principle 
of the causal process of which he had caught a 
glimpse. If he had developed it, he would have 
solved that problem of the plurality of causes which 
baffled him, and other thinkers also. He would 
have seen that a causal process would remain uni- 
form even if one factor was substituted for another, 



1 Taylor, Metaphysics. 

2 Mill, Logic, Bk. III., ch. 10, §3. 



1 6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

provided the new factor was precisely equivalent in 
efficiency to the old. 

Immanent and Trans eunt Causes. Here we 
have another perplexity that has sorely distressed 
logicians. Two of the greatest among modern 
thinkers, Spinoza and Lotze, have emphatically re- 
pudiated all but immanent causes. And some re- 
cent writers of repute have gone still further, have 
converted this difficulty into an excuse for extirpat- 
ing all causality, root and branch. But let us pro- 
ceed more rationally. Let us look at the difficulty 
in the light of the now fully established truth that 
cause is always presented to us in the form of a 
causal process. Then the difficulty disappears. We 
see that the distinction between the immanent and 
the transeunt cause is made absolutely necessary by 
the very nature of such a process; for any factor 
therein in order to be a factor, must at once be acted 
upon and also act upon the others. In fine, exclusive 
emphasis upon either immanent or transeunt causes 
is an error due to not distinguishing between the 
two modes of regarding causation. If we regard it 
in the ancient way — as Aristotle did — we shall see 
causes as mainly immanent: if we regard it in the 
scientific way, we shall see cause as a complex of 
transeunt or interacting factors. 

Hegel and "The Notion." From our present 
point of view some light, I think, may be thrown 
upon one of the darkest of the obscurities crowded 
into Hegel's Logic — namely, the transition from re- 
ciprocal causation to the Notion. Hegel's own ac- 



CAUSALITY 17 

count of the transition is confessedly unintelligible 
— a mere chaos of words without connected mean- 
ing. Even McTaggart, who with wonderful skill 
and patience, has devoted twenty-one years to the 
study of Hegel, says at this point : "I must confess 
myself unable to follow this." 1 But as I have al- 
ready said, the strength of Hegel's dialectic lies in 
its blind, instinctive groping along the line of a 
great truth which he has but vaguely comprehended. 
Especially is that true in the present case. The 
transition from causality to the Notion can be ex- 
plained only by means of a principle which I shall 
demonstrate in Chapter VII — to wit, that the real 
essence of a notion, concept or universal is the af- 
firmation of a causal process. In the second book 
causality is conceived in the crude, primitive, popu- 
lar fashion ; McTaggart says that "the treatment of 
Causality presents very grave defects." 2 But in the 
third book Hegel passes to causality conceived as 
the Notion, that is, as causal process. Not that 
Hegel himself explains the transition in that way. 
In fact, he does not explain it at all, at least intelli- 
igibly. 

Section 3. Uniformity 

But the gravest of all the perplexities concerning 
causation is the question of our belief in its uniform- 
ity. No such problem ever troubled the crude pre- 
scientific view of causation; for, to that view, the 
processes of Nature were not invariable, but a wild 



1 Commentary on Hegel's Logic, p. 194. 

2 Ibid., p. 156; also p. 172 seq. 



1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

mixture of uniformity and irregularity. In the 
heavens, according to Aristotle, all was orderly and 
uniform, except in a few cases like "the wandering' ' 
of the planets. But on earth, events were largely 
fortuitous, and the course of Nature very capri- 
cious. 1 To Aristotle the natural was merely 
that which happened "generally or for the most 
part." 

Modern thought, on the contrary, has insisted 
upon the strict uniformity of natural causation, but 
has never been able to offer any conclusive proof of 
what it so loudly asserts. Mill, indeed, attempted to 
prove it from a mere enumeration of instances, but 
his attempt is now generally recognized to have been 
a failure. Idealists, on the other hand, seem content 
to take it for granted under the shelter of some such 
high-sounding phrase as organic unity or an articu- 
lated system. But mere assumption, however vocif- 
erous, is not proof. Lotze, it may be added, taught 
that belief in uniformity rested "ultimately upon the 
faith which we repose in the universal validity of a 
certain postulate of thought. 2 But the age of faith 
ended long ago. 

Here then we have a chasm wide and deep, at 
the very center of modern thought. And the only 
possible way of bridging this chasm, it seems to me, 
is by my doctrine of the causal process. For, in the 
first place, a process in order to be such must be uni- 
form ; in so far as it is not uniform it ceases to be a 



*De Coelo, II., ch. 5, P- I. 
2 Lotze, Logic, p. 503. 



CAUSALITY 19 

process. In the second place, natural processes do 
not prevent, but through their complexity necessi- 
tate that infinite variableness which we behold every- 
where in Nature. This second fact is best illus- 
trated and verified by that crowning example, that 
most perfect type of scientific induction — Newton's 
discovery of gravitation. In that we have on the 
one hand a causal process of rigid, mathematical 
uniformity at work everywhere, without variable- 
ness or shadow of turning. And yet on the other 
hand not a stone falls to the ground as the result of 
that process, but what its motion varies in each in- 
finitesimal instant both in its velocity and in its di- 
rection as regards absolute space. And so every- 
where in the most trivial of natural events we have 
a miracle of uniformity in the process, and a miracle 
of variation in the result. 

Thus my doctrine of the causal process seems to 
have a double virtue. It accounts at once for that 
uniformity so dear to modern science and for that 
variableness which delighted the more aesthetic 
genius of ancient Greece. 

It may be objected that Newton's induction, how- 
ever important, is but one case among many, and 
therefore does not fully prove my position. I an- 
swer that it is used here more as illustration than as 
proof. The full proof will be given in the chapter 
upon induction, where it will be shown that the es- 
sence — the long sought for secret of the inductive 
method — is the discovery and verifying of a uniform 
process of causation. 



20 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Section 4. Ground 

Another embarrassment that must be considered 
is the attempt of some recent logicians to submerge 
causality under what is alleged to be the wider and 
truer category of ground. Thus Bosanquet affirms 
that "Cause is incomplete ground" ; and labors 
through scores of pages to prove it. Taylor follow- 
ing in the same path, says : "The ground is the per- 
vading common nature of the system thought of as 
identity pervading and determining the character of 
the details. . . . The fundamental law of knowl- 
edge is that whatever exists is a coherent whole." 

Now the fountain-head of all these dark sayings 
is, of course, Hegel's doctrine of the Identity of 
Cause and Effect. And here I will quote Dr. Mc- 
Taggart's criticism of this doctrine, since as com- 
ing from a life-long student and defender in gen- 
eral of Hegel, it will carry more weight than my 
own. Hegel, he says, "gives four examples of the 
asserted identity of Cause and Effect. The first is 
that rain makes things wet and that the rain and 
the wetness are the same water." The other three 
examples I will not quote. Then McTaggart con- 
tinues : "We must notice in the first place that Hegel 
only gives part of the Cause. For example, the 
rain-water by itself will make nothing wet. Unless 
the clouds are driven over the house, unless the 
meteorological conditions allow the rain to fall, the 
roof will not be wet. Nor could the roof be wet if 
the house had never been built. The wind, the air, 
the builders of the house are all parts of the Cause, 



CAUSALITY 21 

but they certainly are not identical with the wetness 
of "the roof. 

"In the second place, rain is not identical with the 
wetness of the roof in the sense required here. The 
rain is detached drops of water falling through the 
air, the other may be a uniform thin sheet of mois- 
ture. They are, from a scientific point of view, dif- 
ferent forms of the same matter. But the form is 
part of the nature of the thing, and, if two things 
differ in form, they are not identical. 

"The other examples show similar defects. And 
so there are two fatal objections to Hegel's position. 
He only reaches it, firstly, by taking one Cause of 
each Effect, although every Effect has many Causes. 
And, secondly, he only reaches it by assuming that 
two things are identical if they are formed of the 
same matter, or if they are of the same value, or 
have a quantitative equality, ignoring the other as- 
pects in which they differ from one another." 1 

After some further criticism, McTaggart con- 
cludes : "Thus we must reject Hegel's theory of the 
Identity of Cause and Effect. It is curious that it 
should have proved one of the most popular of his 
doctrines. It is often maintained by writers whose 
works show little study of the detail of other parts 
of the dialectic." 2 

This criticism is certainly impregnable so far as 
it goes. But there is also urgent need of pricking 
certain other bubbles that float around this doctrine 



1 Commentary on Hegel's Logic, p. 177. 

2 Ibid., p. 179. 



22 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

of the primacy of ground over cause. First, it is 
often argued that judgments of ground and conse- 
quence — abstract and mathematical in their char- 
acter — are convertible, while mere judgments of 
causality are not so : and this is somehow supposed 
to give the former a certain prestige over the latter. 
We can, for instance, convert the proposition, Equi- 
lateral triangles are equiangular; but not the prop- 
osition, A causes B. But in truth it is the first prop- 
osition that is special and subordinate ; the equiangu- 
larity and the equilaterality are convertible because 
they are co-existent effects of triangularity or three- 
sidedness ; in a four-sided figure there would be no 
such necessary co-existence of these two attributes or 
effects. Instead, then, of something wider than 
causality, we have here only a very narrowly limited 
and subordinate case of a causal relation. 

A second argument is that cause refers only to 
changes in time and space; but ground — in arithme- 
tic and geometry for example — gives us "eternal 
truths," immutable facts that will hold good every- 
where and forever. I answer that their immutable- 
ness is caused by the very nature of pure space or 
time wherein there is nothing to cause variation. So 
here again Cause seems to be the primary, supremely 
significant relation that makes everything else in- 
telligible. 

Lotze suggests a third distinction; causes often 
counteract each other, grounds never do. But he 
fails to see that the abstract or mathematical sciences 
deal only with immutable, homogeneous objects — 



CAUSALITY 23. 

space and time — and that these by their very nature 
exclude counteracting or modifying agencies. And 
so here again we find that ground thus seems to dif- 
fer from cause, only because it is limited to one spe- 
cial field, while causality operates everywhere. In 
a word, ground is but one species of cause. 

The doctrine of the primacy of ground over 
cause, then must be dismissed as an idle dream. It 
was a pardonable error two or three centuries ago, 
when mathematics was in the first flush of its won- 
derful development, when the greatest of mathe- 
maticians — Descartes and Leibniz — were also the 
greatest philosophers. But now it seems but the sur- 
vival of a superstition. 

Section 5. Reason and Cause 

Here we have another distinction that has given 
rise to endless doubt and dispute. Among all the 
strange arguments upon this question, the strangest, 
perhaps, is Bradley's. The last three chapters of his 
Logic are mainly devoted to portraying the contrast, 
or rather, the utter antagonism between cause and 
reason. But the gist of his entire argument may be 
exhibited by quoting one of three illustrations which 
he uses : "Two coins are proven to have similar in- 
scriptions because they each are similar to a third. 
But the cause is not found in this inter-relation. The 
cause is the origin from a common die." But surely 
this is a foolish fallacy. Here are two effects very 
different from each other ; the one effect is two sim- 
ilar inscriptions caused by a common die; the other 



24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

effect is our knowledge of this similarity. Of course 
two effects so different — one psychic, the other 
physical — could not be the products of the same 
causal process. But what Bradley fails to see is that 
although the two processes, knowing and stamping, 
are different, still both of them are causal processes. 
There is then no antagonism of reason and cause. 
Reason is but a special process of causation. 

The processes of reason, then, are related to 
causation as a species to its genus. But there is at 
this point an error possible which must be avoided. 
We must not identify the psychic processes of reason 
with the mechanical processes of Nature. They are 
different species of the same genus ; and their differ- 
ences are any and extremely important. But it is 
enough here to designate the one great differentia- 
tion which to a certain degree includes all the others. 
That difference consists in the superior freedom of 
the psychic processes. For while the course of physi- 
cal cause is irreversible, the course of thought is not 
so. Thought is freer than Nature; its movement is 
not confined to one fixed direction. It can, if it so 
wills, follow the course of natural events and from 
the cause go to the effects. Or it can completely re- 
verse that movement and proceed from effects to 
their causes. Indeed, this reversed movement is 
thought's supreme prerogative, the source of its 
greatest victories. Not by deduction from assumed 
causes to their effects, but by patient scrutiny of and 
experiment upon observed results — that is the main 
highway of knowledge. 



CAUSALITY 25 

This superior freedom of thought, this power of 
reversal, is very significant : as we shall see hereafter 
it is the key to some of the gravest problems of phi- 
losophy. For the present, it is sufficient to see that 
both ground and reason are species of which cause 
is the genus. 

Section 6. Cause as a Fetish 

But the most effective of all objections to the be- 
lief in causality is that given in the oft-quoted words 
of Prof. Mach : "I hope that the science of the fu- 
ture will discard the idea of cause and effect as being 
formally obscure ; and in my feeling that these ideas 
contain a strong tincture of fetishism I am certainly 
not alone." And heretofore this objection has in- 
deed been an insuperable one. For plainly, causa- 
tion is imperceptible; it cannot be seen or handled 
or heard or tasted or smelled. And to assume off- 
hand, without even pretending to prove that the hu- 
man mind is mysteriously compelled by some intui- 
tion, or innate idea or a-priori necessity of thought 
to add this idea of cause and effect to what is given, 
does seem closely akin to the superstition of the sav- 
age in regard to his fetish. But if I succeed in es- 
tablishing my fundamental thesis that all thinking 
is essentially a relating of cause and effect, then all 
that will be changed. The belief in causality will 
no longer be a savage superstition, a mere assump- 
tion, a convenient postulate or an unverified hypoth- 
esis. On the contrary, it will be the best, the most 
strictly verified fact within the range of human ex- 



26 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

perience. Science now accepts without suspicion a 
host of imperceptibles — ether, atoms, molecules, 
forces, energy, etc. — because without them it would 
be impossible to account for many facts that are per- 
ceptible. But if my thesis can be proved, then to 
cancel causality would be to invalidate all facts, 
erase all distinctions between the true and the false 
— in fine, make all thinking impossible. 

Furthermore, causality instead of being the crea- 
ture is the destroyer of superstition. For, the source 
of all illusions, either among the savage or the civ- 
ilized, is the ascribing of the given to the wrong 
cause, and the illusion is destroyed by finding out 
its true cause. 

Finally, this revolt against causality springs from 
an inadequate interpretation thereof. The goal of 
science, it is declared, is not explanation, but de- 
scription in exact equations. But the fault in that 
statement consists in not recognizing that the equa- 
tions of science are essentially expressions of causal- 
ity. Ueberweg saw that truth and stated it ad- 
mirably, as follows i 1 "In reality, the genetic and 
causal reference is not wanting, as Schopenhauer as- 
sumes, in mathematical necessity; if we conceive 
numbers as arising from combination and separation 
of unities, and geometrical figures as arising 
through the motion of points, lines, etc., we become 
conscious of their genesis and of the causality which 
is objectively grounded in the nature of homogene- 
ous plurality and spatial co-existence." Nothing 



1 History of Philosophy. II. p. 259, note. 



CAUSALITY 27 

need be added to this statement from the greatest 
and best-balanced of recent logicians. It authenti- 
cates my thesis at the very point — mathematical 
equations — where the superficial thinker sees noth- 
ing but utter contrast to causal propositions. 

The quotation above also illustrates the antithesis 
between Schopenhauer's doctrine and mine. Schop- 
enhauer was very voluble concerning causality; but 
all that he said tended to degrade it to mere se- 
quence, to make it a minor and illusive phase of 
Ground. 



CHAPTER III 

ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 

Section i. The Fallacy of Resemblance 

One of the main sources of error in philosophy- 
is what may be called the fallacy of resemblance. It 
seems universal in a double sense. First, it obtrudes 
everywhere, in theories of perception, conception, 
reasoning and other forms of thought; second, it 
seems to be equally prevalent in all the rival schools 
of philosophy. 

Why, this fallacy should be so widely prevalent is 
readily explained; it is a survival from prelogical 
stages of existence. The brutes are just as capable 
as man of automatically recognizing the similarities 
of things. Indeed they are often far more capable ; 
witness, for example, the dog tracking the foot- 
prints of his prey. This instinctive feeling of re- 
semblance or its opposite is prelogical ; it is anterior 
to genuine thinking. 

That these feelings of likeness and unlikeness are 
merely instinctive or automatic is evident at a 
glance. For the moment we try to formulate any 
such feeling into an exact, logical proposition, it 
shows itself to be inchoate, irremediably vague, in- 
coherent and self -contradictory. We can affirm of 
anything whatsoever that it is like anything else, 
and with equal truth that it is not like it. How now 
can this incoherence and self-contradictoriness in- 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 20, 

herent in every act of association of similarities be 
eliminated, this vague feeling of likeness and unlike- 
ness be converted into a genuine act of thought? 
I answer, only by developing it into a causal rela- 
tion; in other words, by pointing out that upon 
which the likeness^ or the unlikeness depends. Thus 
two objects may be alike in color; that is, their like- 
ness depends upon an optical process, the conjoint 
action of solar influences, ether waves, nerve cur- 
rents, etc. At the same time the two objects may be 
unlike in other ways, their unlikenesses depending 
on other causal processes. Thus the prelogical 
gives way to the logical, to exactitude and definite- 
ness. When the vague self-contradictory feeling of 
likeness and unlikeness thus evolves into the recog- 
nition of a causal relation, then and there only does 
real thinking begin. 

Blindness to this truth, so simple and obvious, has 
been fraught with disaster to modern philosophy. 
For all illusionism, whether in Ancient India or in 
Modern Europe, has had its germ in the fallacy of 
resemblance; it is impossible to prove that our per- 
ceptions are true likenesses or pictures of objects 
perceived, therefore the world is a dream. Berke- 
ley's thesis, for example, is that external things 
"whereof the ideas are copies or resemblances are 
impossible' ' ; and his proof seems little more than an 
incessant reiterating that "an idea can be like noth- 
ing but an idea ; a color or a figure can be like noth- 
ing but another color or figure." 1 

iPrinciples of Knowledge, Open Court Ed., pp. 33, 34, 37, 
39, 40, 41, 44, etc. 



30 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Kant's method was somewhat different. Berkeley 
argues : ideas are not like external things, therefore 
things do not exist. Kant argues : ideas are not like 
things; therefore things are unknowable. The dif- 
ference between the two conclusions seems hardly 
worth discussing. 

Nor did Kant's successors extricate themselves 
from this ubiquitous fallacy of resemblance. With 
them, on the contrary, this primal error grows even 
more and more obtrusive, until it finally culminates 
in Hegel's philosophy of identity and difference. It 
is not possible here to follow all the abstruse wind- 
ings of the Dialectic ; instead thereof let me give two 
quotations from Hegel's eminent disciple and com- 
mentator, Dr. McTaggart. His words will be more 
authoritative than mine. He says first : "But every- 
thing is, as we have seen, Unlike every other thing. 
And it is also Like every other thing, for in any pos- 
sible group we can, as we have seen, find a common 
quality. Thus under this category, everything has 
exactly the same relation to everything else. For it 
is both Like and Unlike everything else." 1 After 
dwelling upon objections to this view our author 
adds : "Hegel maintains that we can only escape this 
difficulty by finding a Likeness and Unlikeness 
which are not indifferent to each other. Now if A 
and B have a particular Unlikeness, which depends 
upon their having a particular Likeness, then the 
indifference, he holds, has broken down. A and B 



Commentary on Hegel's Logic, pp. 112, 113. 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 3 1 

are not simply Like and Unlike. Their Unlikeness 
depends on their Likeness." 

Now up to a certain point this view corresponds 
closely with the one which I have presented ; it does 
so even to the extent of vaguely suggesting that the 
relation of like and unlike must be converted into a 
causal relation — one of dependence. But his final 
explanation that the unlikeness depends upon the 
likeness is certainly sheer nonsense. A man and a 
mouse may be alike in being black, they are unlike 
in many other respects ; does Hegel mean to say that 
all the many qualities in which they differ depend 
upon or result from their both being black? 

And just here, I think, we have the real "secret 
of Hegel. ,, In repudiating the old logic and its law 
of non-contradiction, he is supposed by his admirers 
to have risen to something higher and better. The 
fact is that he remains standing at a lower level than 
the logical. His philosophy of identity and differ- 
ence never rises above those prelogical stages of 
mentality which are governed by mere feelings of 
likeness and unlikeness. And in that realm of the 
prelogical all is inevitably incoherent, ambiguous 
and self-contradictory. That is the reason why 
Hegel finds it so evident that "contradiction is the 
moving spirit of the world." 

Section 2. Abstraction 

Another devolution in modern philosophy seems 
to be a growing antipathy to abstraction. Such a 
feeling, indeed, has always widely prevailed ; for, to 



32 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

abstract is to think, and thinking is very hard work 
for which men generally have but little love. But 
this antipathy reaches its climax in the Speculative 
Logic ; the universe, we are there told, dissolves into 
a mist of self-contradiction, because we insist upon 
abstracting or isolating its parts. For example, 
throughout Bradley's Logic, everything appears to 
hinge upon the singular claim that to abstract is to 
mutilate. We are told that "all analytic judgments 
are false." Why? Because in judgment we must 
abstract, and in abstracting, "we have separated, di- 
vided, abridged, dissected, we have mutilated the 
given." 

( i ) Now upon its very surface such a statement 
shows an error so glaring as to seem almost wilful. 
It confounds the mental act of distinguishing with 
the physical act of dividing or separating. Viewing 
an apple, for instance, I note its red color. But in 
so doing, I certainly am not cutting the apple into 
two parts, but am merely fixing my attention upon 
one of its many attributes. The only imaginable ex- 
cuse for such confusion of thought is, that the ideal- 
ist, since he effaces the contrast of thought and 
things, cannot recognize any difference between dis- 
tinguishing and dividing. That may explain the 
confusion, but it does not justify it. Your denial 
of material things is a singular reason for changing 
the mental act of distinguishing into the dividing or 
mutilating of things. 

(2) In a later work, our author reiterates his 
theory in another form of words. "For ideality lies 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 33 

in the disjoining of qualities from being. . . . 
The main point and essence is that some feature in 
the 'what' of a given fact should be alienated from 
its 'that' so as to work beyond it, or, at all events, 
loose from it. . . . The essential nature of the 
finite is that everywhere, as it presents itself, its 
character should slide beyond the limits of its 
existence." 

This new form of statement serves to disclose a 
still more fatal defect in the theory than that of 
hypostasizing. It does not and cannot explain why 
the human mind in all ages, in all its development 
of language, grammar, logic and science has per- 
sisted in this "disjoining of quality from being — 
or more properly this differentiation of the thing 
from its attribute. But my thesis gives a ready, 
clear and incontrovertible answer to this question 
of the why. It presents the abstracting act, the dis- 
tinguishing of thing from attribute as essentially a 
distinction of cause from effect. But as was shown 
in the previous chapter, the thing is not the sole 
cause, it is one factor in the process producing the 
attribute or quality. The quality then is not dis- 
joined, divided or cut loose from the thing; and yet 
it is rightly distinguished from the thing by its rela- 
tions to the other factors upon which it depends. 

(3) Again, my view of abstraction as a discrim- 
inating between cause and effect unravels another 
enigma. We have just seen that the view explains 
why the thing and its attribute are rightly regarded 
as different : it explains also their unity, their insep- 



34 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

arableness. For, as I have already pointed out, the 
grand peculiarity of the causal relation — one shared 
by no other relation known to thought — is that in 
the very act of differentiating, it also unites. If I 
divide a thing, split a log or a stone, it remains di- 
vided ; but if I think of A as the cause of B; in the 
very act of thus distinguishing between them, I at 
the same time connect them together by the closest, 
the firmest, of all bonds. Precisely in this way, ab- 
straction sets apart and yet unites the thing and its 
attribute. 

(4) Bradley also complains that in abstracting 
you destroy that vital interconnection of things 
which is their life. On the contrary, without ab- 
straction we should have remained eternally ig- 
norant that there was any such vital interconnection 
of things. Every attribute abstracted and studied 
reveals itself as the product not merely of the thing 
qualified, but of a vast complex of cosmic forces. 
Thus instead of being destroyed, the vista of inter- 
connection is constantly being enlarged and il- 
lumined. 

Finally, this antipathy to abstraction is but an- 
other phase of the same tendency we have described 
as the fallacy of resemblance. This is clearly 
evinced in Berkeley's well-known avowal: "I find 
indeed I have a faculty of imagining or representing 
to myself the ideas of those particular things I have 
perceived and of variously compounding and divid- 
ing them. I can imagine a man with two heads. 
... I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 35 

each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest 
of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imag- 
ine it must have some particular shape or color, 
etc." Berkeley then denies abstract qualities, solely 
because he cannot imagine one. In other words, be- 
cause he has never seen one; for, to imagine is to 
recall memory-images of what we have perceived. 
And Sir Wm. Hamilton, although claiming to be a 
realist, here agrees precisely with Berkeley : "A con- 
cept cannot be represented in imagination," there- 
fore, "it cannot be realized in thought." Both phi- 
losophers deny the reality of whatsoever cannot be 
hypostasized into a memory-image or picture re- 
sembling what they have actually perceived. 

Section J. Relations 

I must also consider Bradley's celebrated dictum 
that all relational modes of thought give appearance 
and not truth. For, that doctrine, if true, would 
shatter my thesis at one stroke. Furthermore, his 
argument, I think, has never been conclusively an- 
swered. Nor can it be except from our present 
point of view. 

(A) Note first that Bradley argues against all re- 
lations indiscriminately; he cuts them all down to- 
gether with one sweep of his dialectical scythe. But I 
have already shown that there is an immense contrast 
between the different kinds. Relations of mere like- 
ness or difference are prerational modes of psychic 
activity ; they are vague, incoherent and in their very 



36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

nature self -contradictory. With equal truth we can 
say of anything whatsoever, that it is like and not 
like anything else in the universe. And since Brad- 
ley does not distinguish between the different kinds 
of relations possibly his argumentation applies only 
to these weak, flimsy pseudo-relations whose very 
essence is self-contradiction. 

And precisely that proves to be the case. Of 
course, I cannot quote here the score of pages over 
which Bradley expands his argument. But let the 
reader search for himself ; he will find that from first 
to last the only relations which Bradley considers are 
those of likeness and difference. Even when con- 
fined to these, his argument is not valid, as we shall 
see later. But even if it were valid of them, it is a 
monstrous leap from these vague, self-contradictory 
pseudo-relations to all relations. 

(B) But let us go a little further. Remember 
that in the first section already mentioned, I have 
shown that the crude, vague, self-contradictory 
pseudo-relations of likeness and difference can be 
converted into genuine, definite and self-consistent 
relations only by transforming them into causal re- 
lations. To do this we must point out and empha- 
size that upon which the likeness or unlikeness de- 
pends. Thus two objects may be alike in respect to 
color, that is, their likeness depends upon an optical 
process; at the same time the two objects may be 
unlike in some other respect, their unlikeness result- 
ing from some other cause. Thus by simply stating 
that upon which the likeness and the difference sev- 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 2)7 

erally depend, the vague and self -contradictory is 
converted into the definite and coherent. And then 
only does real thinking begin. 

Now in the light of this manifest truth let us ex- 
amine the only argument, I think, in which Bradley 
considers relations in general, and not merely those 
of likeness and difference. It is borrowed from 
Lotze by the by, and is as follows: "(a) The rela- 
tion is not the adjective of one term only; for if so, 
it does not relate, (b) Nor is it the adjective of 
each term taken apart; for then again there is no 
relation between them, (c) Nor is their relation 
their common property; for then what keeps them 
apart? They are not two terms because not sep- 
arate." 1 

Now the last two horns of this trilemma, (b) and 
(c), are obviously false when applied to a causal re- 
lation. For as to (b), the two terms are qualified 
apart, the one as cause and the other as effect. And 
yet they are united by being causally related. And 
as to (c) their causal connection is the common 
property of both terms : and yet they are two terms 
kept apart or distinguished by this very property. 

In fine Bradley's famous trilemma is through and 
through a fallacy due to his utter failure to compre- 
hend the real nature of a causal relation. For the 
gist, the essence, the deepest, most significant and 
valuable characteristic of a causal relation is just 
this — a causal relation enables us to distinguish be- 
tween two terms as cause and effect; and yet by this 

iAppearance and Reality, p. 32, note. 



38 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

very distinction the two terms are united by the 
firmest, the most enduring of all bonds. 

I do not emphasize this view of causality so 
strongly, merely to break down Bradley's paradox; 
we shall find other flaws equally fatal in his argu- 
ment. But this insight into the nature of causality 
as at once differentiating and integrating is new; it 
has been attained by no other thinker so far as 
known to me. And we shall recur to it again as 
solving still other problems besides the present one, 
that have heretofore perplexed and baffled phi- 
losophy. Hence the present emphasis upon it. 

(C) But to return to Bradley; his argument is 
ruined by still another defect. It takes account only 
of relations supposed to subsist between qualities. 
But the real relations of qualities are to the things 
or processes from which they result; to each other 
they have only the pseudo-relations of likeness or 
difference. Thus his argument while pretending to 
include all relations whatsoever is doubly defective; 
it is limited to relations between qualities, and even 
there further limited to mere relations of likeness 
and difference. And as we have already seen, noth- 
ing is easier than to find self-contradiction in such 
pseudo-relations. For their very essence is self-con- 
tradiction. 

(D) And yet, strange to say, Bradley's argu- 
ment does not accomplish even that easy task. It is 
subtile, ingenious, and bewildering, but it proves 
nothing. He asserts first that there is "a diversity 
which falls inside of each quality. It has a double 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 39 

character as both supporting and being made by the 
relation." Now each quality may be loosely or fig- 
uratively said to "support" its difference from some 
other; but it is mere foolishness to say that it is 
"made" by that relation. Redness is made not by 
its difference from green, but by the optical process 
of refraction. 

But Bradley, like Hegel, knows that almost any- 
thing will be believed if you repeat it often enough 
and with sufficient audacity. So he adds : "It may 
be taken as at once condition or result, and the ques- 
tion is how to combine this variety." Now doubt- 
less each term is a condition of their difference; if 
the qualities did not exist there would evidently be 
no difference between them. But it is absurd to say 
that each quality is the "result" of its difference 
from the other. Weight and color are quite differ- 
ent, but neither of them results from that difference. 

(E) Bradley has still another line of argument. 
He insists that the relation being something itself 
"must bear a relation to the terms. And thus we are 
forced to go on finding new relations without end. 
The links are united by a link, and this bond of 
union is a link which also has two ends and these 
require each a fresh link to connect them with the 
old." It is very important, he urges, that the rela- 
tion should be conceived as "a solid thing" ; for "if 
you take it as a kind of medium or unsubstantial at- 
mosphere, it is a connection no longer." All this is 
plainly the hypostasizing of abstractions carried to 
the climax of absurdity ; but as the critics in general 



40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

have recognized and ridiculed it as such, I leave it 
to them. 

(F) But in the Appendix to his second edition 
there is a single paragraph which seems to have a 
purport altogether alien to the general drift of his 
book — to be in fact a strangely prophetic vision of 
what I am striving to establish in this volume. Let 
me quote it in full. 

"The remedy might lie here. If the diversities 
were complementary aspects of a process of connec- 
tion and distinction, the process not being external 
to the elements, or again a foreign compulsion of 
the intellect, but itself the intellect's own proprius 
motus, the case would be altered. Each aspect 
would be of itself a transition to the other aspect, a 
transition intrinsic and natural at once to itself and 
the intellect. And the whole would be a self-evident 
analysis and synthesis of the intellect itself by itself. 
Synthesis here has to be mere synthesis and has be- 
come self-completion, and analysis, no longer mere 
analysis, is self-explication. And the question why 
and how the many are one and the one is many here 
loses its meaning. There is no how or why besides 
the self-evident process, and towards its own differ- 
ences the whole is at once their how and their why, 
their being, substance and system, their reason, 
ground and principle of diversity and unity." 1 

In that paragraph my fundamental thesis is 
roughly outlined, (i) For cause and effect are 
complementary, not contradictory aspects : each im- 



1 Appearance and Reality, p. 568. 



ABSTRACTION AND RELATION 4 1 

plies the other. (2) They are aspects, too, of a 
process of connection and distinction; for the gist 
of a causal process, as we have seen, is that by the 
same stroke it at once unites and differentiates. 

(3) Nor is this principle of causality a foreign com- 
pulsion of the intellect, but the intellect's own pro- 
prius motus; in other words, it is the intellect's sole 
essential function, its very nature, life or soul. 

(4) Indeed Bradley himself has on page 562 ex- 
plicitly defined this motus as the same thing as 
ground or reason. (5) Furthermore, "each aspect 
would of itself be a transition to the other aspect, 
a transition intrinsic and natural." What is that but 
the corollary to my thesis — to wit, that the cause can 
be known only through its effects and conversely the 
effects through their cause. (6) The next state- 
ment concerning the blending of synthesis and 
analysis can be verified — as I shall show — only by 
interpreting judgment as a relating of cause and 
effect. (7) The last two sentences give a rather 
hazy version of the simple truth that the one is the 
cause of the many, and the many are the effects of 
the one. 

But on the next page Bradley rejects this princi- 
ple which he admits would solve his chief perplexi- 
ties, and the reason he assigns is that the principle is 
not "self-evident." That I freely admit; self-evi- 
dence is a mere asylum for mental decrepitude. 
No ! the principle of causality is not self-evident. 
Nor is it given by sense; it cannot be seen, heard, 
tasted, smelled or handled. How then can it be veri- 



42 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

fled ? Only in one way ; if it can be proved that the 
relating of cause and effect is the one essential func- 
tion to which all thinking can be reduced, then to 
cancel causality is to render all thinking impossible. 






CHAPTER IV 

THE NEW REALISM 

Section i. Substance 

I seek now to outline roughly the new realism 
which is surely coming, to put an end to the present 
philosophic chaos. Let us begin by considering two 
errors that have obscured and almost destroyed the 
realistic conviction. The first of these is an errone- 
ous view of substance; the second, what may be 
fairly described as pseudo-realism. This section will 
be devoted to the first of these hindrances. 

Three of the greatest of modern thinkers, Des- 
cartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, have based their several 
systems of philosophy upon the conception of sub- 
stance. All three seem to have been striving after 
a realistic and rational conception of things; all 
three, it is generally conceded, failed to attain their 
end. The first named was accused by Kant of prob- 
lematic idealism; the second, according to Hegel, 
taught acosmism; the third landed in the vagaries 
of pre-established harmony. And their common fail- 
ure, I think, was due to a common cause. They all 
had a defective and misleading conception of sub- 
stance. They did not give it its proper place in the 
scale of categories ; they all regarded it as the primal, 
the supreme and all-inclusive category. But that it 
cannot possibly be — at least if I am right in my con- 
tention that the sole, essential function of thought 



44 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

is to discriminate between cause and effect. Causal- 
ity therefore is the supreme, all-embracing category : 
all others — including substantiality — are but species 
under this one genus, derivative forms that must al- 
ways be subordinated to the causal principle in 
which they are rooted. But the great thinkers just 
named did not see this. In making Substance the 
paramount principle they robbed causality of its 
rightful primacy, made it secondary, minified it al- 
most to the vanishing point. 

The case of Spinoza is the most remarkable, be- 
cause on the surface he seems to magnify and exalt 
the idea of cause; indeed, to that seeming is due all 
the glamour investing his system, despite its many 
defects. But look deeper and you see that by cause he 
means nothing but ground and consequence, or the 
merely logical connection between premises and con- 
clusion. Time is a delusion; all real knowledge 
must be "under the form of eternity" ; change is a 
dream; the only actual relations are those eternal, 
immutable ones that interconnect mathematical 
ideas; in fine, Spinoza has abolished the fact of 
causality except in this its most emasculated, shad- 
owy and dubious form. 

This same minimizing of causality appears in 
Spinoza's denial of all but immanent causes. And 
his error here amounts to far more than merely ef- 
facing one of the two kinds of causation; to erase 
interaction is to blot out all immanence : for nothing 
finite ever acts save in co-operation with other 



THE NEW REALISM 45 

agencies. Finally, even God as conceived by- 
Spinoza is not a cause in any proper or usual sense 
of the term : He is merely the substratum of things, 
the innermost substance of the universe. 

Leibniz pulverizes the One Substance into an in- 
finite host of monads; nevertheless he agrees with 
Spinoza in belittling causality. There are, he 
teaches, two kinds of knowledge, truths of reason 
and truths of fact. The former are necessary and 
ruled by the principle of identity ; the latter are con- 
tingent and ruled by the causal principle. But these 
latter or contingent truths are not really true; deal- 
ing only with spatial and temporal relations, they 
are but "confused ideas," fictions, dissolving views ; 
they explain nothing, but merely show one fact as 
dependent upon another, and that upon another and 
so on in infinite regress. Leibniz's God also, like 
Spinoza's, is no cause in any proper sense of the 
term; He seems to be merely a name for the pre- 
established harmony of the monads. In fine, as his 
disciple Wolff rightly taught, Leibniz's two princi- 
ples are not independent ; the causal one is but a pale 
shadow, deduced from and subordinate to the prin- 
ciple of identity. 

Both these immortal thinkers, then, share a com- 
mon defect; causality with both is depreciated, re- 
duced to the vagueness and inefficiency of ground 
and consequence. And that is the ultimate reason 
why both fail. Spinoza, indeed, seems dimly con- 
scious of this defect. For, throughout his exposi- 
tion, there is an evident wavering between two ways 



46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

of regarding substance. On the one hand, he con- 
siders it as, purely indeterminate and abstract being, 
such as can be characterized by no positive mark; 
any determination would infringe its absoluteness. 
"But we can in no way pass from this pure in- 
definiteness to the determinate activities that are 
requisite in order that substance should be real. Ac- 
cordingly Spinoza as frequently treats substance as 
the sum of possible reality which cannot be ex- 
hausted in any one attribute, and which contains all 
possible perfection and reality. But both cannot be 
retained and united. ... A substance or ground 
of existence which is but the negation of all finite 
existences, can in no way serve as their bond of 
union." 1 

In Leibniz the wavering and inconsistency are 
equally obtrusive. He is accounted the great apos- 
tle of Force, and yet all real connection and interac- 
tion of things are denied. Whatever happens in the 
windowless monad comes from it alone; it is like 
a separate world, self-sufficient, independent of 
every other creature, embracing the infinite, express- 
ing the universe. From this infinite disconnected- 
ness, there is no escape save through the strange de- 
vice of the pre-established harmony. 

Viewing these facts, we may well say with Rus- 
sell : "It became necessary to base metaphysics upon 
some other principle than that of substance, a task 
not yet accomplished." 2 



^damson, Development of Modern Philosophy, pp. 65, 66. 
2 Russell, Philosophy of Leibniz, p. 126. 



THE NEW REALISM 47 

But from our present point of view that task does 
not seem very far from accomplishment. We have 
shown that Spinoza and Leibniz failed, not because 
their principle of substance was false or empty, but 
because they gave to it a primacy that did riot belong 
to it; in other words, because they failed to subor- 
dinate it to that higher and wider category of cause 
and effect from which all other categories are de- 
rived, and by which they are modified. To that 
primal error can be traced back almost all the 
other main errors in those two masterpieces — 
the philosophy of Spinoza and that of Leibniz. 
Here I can mention only three errors of each — 
the three that have most influenced modern spec- 
ulation. 

(I) Beginning with Spinoza, we have first his 
doctrine of the indeterminateness of substance. That 
holds only if you regard substance merely as that in 
which attributes inhere ; then, indeed, it is an empty 
abstraction. But not so, if you regard it as a factor 
in countless causal processes, as I have explained in 
chapter II. 

(II) The second error is the doctrine that deter- 
mination is negation. This is so closely allied with 
the first that we need not dwell upon it. Remember, 
however, that it was taken over by Schelling and 
Hegel, in fact, is the very corner-stone of the tet- 
ter's system. 

(III) The third is the doctrine of God as sub- 
stance. That, if substance means mere inherence, is 
crude pantheism at its worst. But if infinite sub- 



48 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

stance means an infinite and complete Cause, you 
have the purest theism. 

(IV) Leibniz's first error is the absolute discon- 
nectedness of the universe. But all that is changed 
when we put cause in the place of substance. For, 
as I have already pointed out, the essence of causal- 
ity consists in at once distinguishing and yet uniting 
by the firmest of bonds. 

(V) Another error of his was the negation of 
Space. But instead of space being "a confused per- 
ception," as Leibniz taught, it will be shown in the 
next chapter that the real confusion lies in con- 
founding two very distinct objects — space and the 
spatial properties of things, related as cause and 
effect. 

(VI) The third and suicidal error is the virtual 
effacement of substances. According to Leibniz, sub- 
stance after all is but the sum of its attributes. The 
diamond is but the extension or diffusion of hard- 
ness; milk the extension of whiteness, etc. That 
doctrine forms; the transition to the second phase of 
modern philosophy and will be discussed here- 
after. 

Here then we have the six elemental features, or 
errors of two renowned systems of thought. All of 
them have been seen — or will be shown to be read- 
ily surmountable when we subordinate substance 
to cause as the supreme category. In other 
words, when we think of the relation between 
substance and attribute as causality instead of in- 
herence. 



THE NEW REALISM 49 

Section 2. Pseudo-Realism 
Just now there seems to be a rising tide of revolt 
against idealism. But there is great danger that this 
revolt may prove to be but a reactionary movement, 
a mere relapse into materialism. For, as we have 
already shown in part and will more fully prove 
hereafter, the only safeguard against so dismal a re- 
sult lies in keeping the principle of causality para- 
mount and supreme above all others. But, so far, 
modern realism has never been able to break loose 
from its enchainment to Hume's great paradox, the 
reduction of causality to mere sequence. That is 
notably evinced even in the case of Reid, the great- 
est of modern realists. Reid saw very clearly that 
Berkeley's idealism rested wholly upon the old 
superstition that thoughts were images or pictures 
of things perceived ; with all the skill and power of 
genius he set to work to overthrow this pictorial phi- 
losophy, and succeeded so well that even idealists 
have now generally abandoned it. But this accom- 
plished, he had nothing else to put in its place except 
another equally empty assumption — the infallibility 
of common sense. He had so far succumbed to 
Hume's influence as to reject the true basis of real- 
ism ; at least, he denied efficient causality to uncon- 
scious things. "I perceive the walls of the room 
where I sit," he writes, "but they are perfectly inac- 
tive and therefore act not upon the mind." 1 Hav- 
ing thus put out the light of causality, everything 
becomes for him darkness and mystery. We neces- 
1 Reid, Intellectual Powers, II. p. 219. 



50 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

sarily affirm the existence of external things, but 
"by an act which cannot be defined." Or again; 
By what rules of logic we make the inference (of 
externality) it is impossible to show; nay, it is im- 
possible to show how our sensations and thoughts 
can give us the very notion either of a mind or a 
faculty." 

Or, as another would-be realist, Rosmini, has 
said : Reid denied the intervention of any "idea" be- 
tween the object perceived and the perceiving sub- 
ject; so he had to answer "the formidable question — 
How can I judge that a thing exists of which I have 
no idea? The answer to this question would have 
led the Scottish philosopher very far in his investi- 
gations; but whether it was that he despaired of 
finding it, or that he considered it of no importance 
he did not even seek for it. He contented himself 
with enveloping his 'original judgment' in a cloud 
of mystery, thus, possibly, to screen it from all 
further questionings on the part of inquisitive 
minds." 1 

But how now does Rosmini himself prove his own 
realism? By resurrecting the long ago dead and 
buried doctrine of innate ideas. Or rather of one 
innate idea, that of existence or indeterminate be- 
ing. By simply applying this idea of existence to 
our perceptions, a controversy that has lasted more 
than twenty centuries is suddenly ended. So, at 
least, Rosmini imagines. 

Sir Wm. Hamilton's philosophy seems another 

1 Rosmini, Origin of Ideas, I. p. 86. 



THE NEW REALISM 5 1 

conspicuous example of what realism ought not to 
be. Its three main features are these; first, the as- 
sumption contradicted by both physiological and 
psychological science that we have an immediate 
awareness of external things; second, the paradox 
that different persons gazing at the sun will each 
see a different sun; third, uncertainty whether a 
thing is anything more than the sum of its qualities. 
These three, I think, are the chief water-marks of 
pseudo-realism. 

And in more recent attempts at realistic specula- 
tion these three water-marks become even more ob- 
vious. Hobhouse, for instance, writes an immense 
volume in defense of realism; but toward the end 
openly asserts and argues through a long chapter 
that things are but sums of abstract qualities. 1 

The signs, then, for a genuine realism seem 
hardly encouraging. But the old adage is true, I 
hope, that it is darkest just before dawn. 

Section 3. First Proof of Realism 

My first proof rests upon a right understanding 
of the relation between substance and attribute. To 
gain such an understanding we must get rid of 
Berkeley's doctrine that the substance is nothing but 
a name for the sum of its attributes. 

(1) It has already been shown in the preceding 
chapter that Berkeley's speculation rests upon two 
enormous errors — the fallacy of resemblance and the 
cancelling of abstraction. And these two are 



1 Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, p. 556, note. 



52 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

branches of one stem. For to expunge abstraction 
is virtually to destroy all thinking; it is thoughts' 
suicide. And the fallacy of resemblance — reason- 
ing from likeness and unlikeness, identity and dif- 
ference^ — is, as was shown, a reversion to prelogical 
modes of apprehension. Thus genuine thought, by 
these twin errors, is doubly annihilated. Hence 
Berkeley's entire argument rests upon what is really 
the extinction of thought. 

(2) But interpret now the relation of substance 
and attribute as the nature of thought demands — 
to wit, causally. In other words, conceive the sub- 
stance or thing as the central, the specifically de- 
termining factor in each and all the causal processes, 
whereby the various attributes are produced. In- 
stantly light begins to dawn. For example, Berke- 
ley starts from the archaic, the thoroughly false 
view of the thing as the hidden substrate which sup- 
ports the qualities. It becomes then easy for him to 
show the emptiness of such a view and so to shove 
aside the substance as an idle dream. "Now I de- 
sire that you would explain to me what is meant by 
Matter's supporting extension. . . . It is evident 
'support' cannot here be taken in its usual or literal 
sense — as when we say that pillars support a build- 
ing; in what sense therefore must it be taken?" 1 
That question, to him unanswerable, is the corner- 
stone of Berkeley's renowned philosophy. 

What the attributes need to make them intelligi- 
ble is not a support but a real bond of union. But 

iBerkeley, Principles of Knowledge, § 16. 



THE NEW REALISM 53 

Berkeley, it may be urged, supplies such a bond by 
postulating a God who produces and combines our 
sensations. Well ! doubtless God is the cause of all. 
But He is made known to us only through the uni- 
form methods, the causal processes which He has 
established for the production of natural results. 
And Berkeley makes that knowledge impossible. 
For, he dissolves the visible universe into a mere ag- 
gregate of sensations, evanescent, disordered and 
often deceptive, produced in the individual mind by 
God's direct action upon it. All intervening 
agencies, all things that make for the stability, the 
order and harmony of the cosmos, are swept aside 
as mere illusions. Nothing is real but the turmoil of 
our private sensations. And from that chaos you 
can no more prove the existence of God than of 
"the man in the moon." 

(3) Another great source of illusionism is its 
complete misapprehension of the relation between 
thought and sense. This defect is germinal in 
Berkeley, but full-blown in Kant; and so we turn 
to the latter's philosophy to study it. One main out- 
come of persistent thought must evidently be the 
detection of those deceptive agencies that hover 
everywhere over the field of sensation. For, an il- 
lusion is simply the ascription of an effect to the 
wrong cause; and the essential function of thought 
is to relate effects to their true causes. Now in 
Kant's time, the critical, inquiring spirit of modern 
science had already unmasked such a host of illu- 
sions that all Nature seemed to be thronged with 



54 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

them. But for him this new awakening to the de- 
ceptiveness of the senses took a curious and fatal 
form. Apparently he did not see that the senses 
were the source of deception, and that the grand 
prerogative of thought was to overcome them. On 
the contrary, the mind seemed a mere nest of 
a-priorities that prevented man from ever knowing 
things as they really were. Thought once deemed 
divine, became satanic, the father of lies. And ob- 
viously from this Kantian view, it was but a short 
step to Hegel's theory of universal self-contradiction ; 
for, in the long run, all liars contradict themselves. 

Now what proof does Kant offer for this amazing 
doctrine of universal, irremediable illusion ? Simply 
this ; he claims to have found a large number of ele- 
ments — twelve categories, two forms of sense, and 
sundry others — which are indispensable in all right 
thinking and knowing, and yet are not given in any 
sensible experience; hence we must regard them as 
innate ideas or a-priofi necessities of thought; as 
such, they are purely subjective, merely our human 
ways of thinking which can give no true insight into 
the outer realm of reality. 

But against these assumptions, which prove noth- 
ing, I urge four facts that together seem to me to 
outline the real relation of thought to sense, 
(a) Thought does not alter experience, but simply 
interprets it. (b) There are no innate or a-priori 
ideas that can be verified as such, nor is there any 
need of any. (c) To what is given by sense, 
thought adds nothing but itself — that is, its essen- 



THE NEW REALISM 55 

tial activity as a relating of cause and effect. 
(d) And the goal of that activity is not, as Kant 
supposes, to create illusions, but to discover and de- 
stroy them. 

(4) The question of universals will be fully 
treated in Chapter VII. Here I briefly notice a spe- 
cial phase of that question upon which the objectors 
to realism have most relied. For this purpose I turn 
to Bradley and begin with a passing reference to his 
famous puzzle concerning predication. "If you 
predicate what is different, you ascribe to the sub- 
ject what it is not; and if you predicate what is not 
different you say nothing at all." I answer that to 
predicate or think is to assert a causal relation ; and, 
as I have so often shown, the very essence of such a 
relation is to at once differentiate and integrate. 
Hence the subject and predicate are differenced as 
being one the partial cause, and the other the effect; 
and at the same time they are integrated by the 
causal bond. Bradley's revival of the foolish 
Megaric quirk that the copula means identity I for- 
bear to notice. But in his account of Ideality we 
come more directly to the question of the universal. 
"The real has two aspects, the 'that' and the 'what' ; 
and thought seems to consist essentially in their di- 
vision. . . . For ideality lies in the disjoining of 
quality from being. . . . The main point and the 
essence is that some feature in the 'what' of a given 
fact should be alienated from its 'that' so as to work 
beyond it or, at all events, loose from it." 1 Similarly, 

Appearance and Reality, p. 163. 



56 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

the one point around which his treatise upon 
Logic mainly revolves is his description of uni- 
versal as "wandering adjectives'' cut loose 
from reality — "mutilated, dissected, torn from that 
vital interconnection of things which is their 
life." 

In all the eccentricities of mediaeval realism there 
is nothing so absurd as that. The schoolmen, at 
least, understood the scope and significance of the 
problem of universals ; and that by itself was a great 
step forward. They say that thought expresses by 
universals what sense gives only as particulars. But 
what justifies thought in making so great a trans- 
formation of the given? And how can universals 
be a true representation of anything so different 
from them as particulars? The whole problem of 
the certainty and value of knowledge turns upon 
these questions. But Bradley loftily waves them 
aside with a metaphor and a scornful epithet. The 
predicate, he says, has worked "loose"; it has be- 
come a "wandering adjective." But interpret this 
universalizing causally; conceive the predicate as an 
effect of a causal process wherein the subject is the 
central factor. We see then first that the predicate 
to be known at all must be a universal — an oft-re- 
peated effect; for an effect could not be known as 
such, if it never appeared but once. Second, the 
quality in being thus universalized is not, as Bradley 
imagines, alienated, divided or torn loose from its 
being. On the contrary, the two are brought into 
the closest of all possible relations to each other. 



THE NEW REALISM S7 

To say that the quality is occult or inherent on the 
substance is a mere mumbling of words without 
meaning. But the quality conceived as an effect is 
most intimately related with that upon which its be- 
ing depends. Furthermore this relation is a verifi- 
able one, in the strictest sense of the term. Our or- 
gans of sense form a natural laboratory wherein 
thought is continually verifying these causal rela- 
tionships. 

Third, least of all, is the predicate "mutilated, 
torn from that vital interconnection of things which 
is their life." The exact opposite to that really hap- 
pens. The predicate or quality by being universal- 
ized has its vital interconnection illumined and 
immensely expanded. A color, for instance, is con- 
ceived not merely as a vague somewhat inherent in 
the colored thing, but as in interconnection with all 
that vast process of causation whereby color is pro- 
duced. 

We have now examined the three principal argu- 
ments for illusionism, severally presented by Berke- 
ley, by Kant and by the Neo-Hegelians ; and we 
have found them all to be nugatory. We have 
further found that when they are properly inter- 
preted in the light of our causal principle, they turn 
into solid arguments for the realistic theory. That 
is my first proof of realism. 

Section 4. Second Proof of Realism 

My second proof consists simply in showing that 
the denial of a real world of things leads inevitably 



58 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

to utter nihilism — to the complete extinction of 
thought. 

(i) For such a denial logically involves the de- 
struction of your belief in your own existence. 
Descartes boldly asserted that whatever else one 
doubted he could not doubt his own existence; but 
that was a sheer assumption made in despair of find- 
ing any other basis for his philosophy; and for the 
same reason it has been re-echoed by most other 
theorists. Obviously, however, the self you believe 
in is mainly your bodily self; in fact, the majority 
seem now to reject the soul as a mere survival of 
savage animism ; and certainly you would not claim 
that your body existed, while all the rest of the 
world did not. 

(2) But the idealist will object that even if we 
discard the soul, we cannot doubt the existence of 
the stream or series of sensations. I answer that 
just there our ignorance seems to culminate. For 
no sensation has any discernible attribute of its own 
by which it can be discriminated from any other 
sensation. We discriminate them from each other 
only by means of the attributes of the spatial objects 
perceived. This is true of the grand divisions of 
our perceptive activity. How could we distinguish 
between sight and touch, for instance, except by ref- 
erence to the external organs whence they issue ? 
Still more manifest is this in regard to each particu- 
lar sensation. The sensation produced by a round 
object is not itself circular. The sensation of a 
mountain is no taller than the sensation of an ant- 



THE NEW REALISM 59 

hill. The sensation of a red object is not itself 
painted red. 

Others have noted this unknowability of the 
sensation apart from the object perceived, although 
apparently without recognizing its extreme signifi- 
cance for the theory of knowledge. Thus Brentano 
says: "We find no contrasts between presentations 
except those of the objects to which presentations 
refer. Only so far as warm and cold, light and 
dark, a high note and a low one form contrasts, can 
we speak of the corresponding sensations as con- 
trasted; and in general, there is in any other sense 
than this, no contrast within the entire range of 
these conscious processes." 1 So Adamson observes : 
"Only through the character of that which is appre- 
hended and referred to the objective, does the sub- 
ject, the inner life receive definiteness of meaning 
still more explicit." 2 And Hume says : "Nature has 
taught us the use of our limbs without giving us the 
knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they 
are actuated." There is nothing strange or anoma- 
lous in the fact that we are similarly ignorant con- 
cerning the sensations by which we attain knowl- 
edge of the outer world. 

Evidently then to abolish the outer spatial world 
renders all knowledge impossible of the inner 
world of thought and feeling. For, of this inner 
world that which seems most certain, clear and 
distinct — namely, our sensations — is utterly un- 



1 Psychologie, I. p. 29. 

development of Modern Philosophy, p. 291. 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

known to us apart from our knowledge of external 
things. 

But you object that Kant has overcome this diffi- 
culty by his happy surmise of a-priofi forms which 
objectify or spatialize our inner sensations. On the 
contrary, Kant has merely piled two other moun- 
tains of difficulty on the top of the first one. First, 
we have the original difficulty, the unknowability of 
sensations; second, Kant adds to this another and 
greater difficulty that things are also unknowable; 
thirdly, on top of these he places a still more stu- 
pendous difficulty — to wit, that the mind uncon- 
sciously, without knowing what it does and acting 
upon things of which it knows nothing, yet some- 
how miraculously transmutes them, giving form to 
the formless, and permanence to that which had no 
duration. Surely Kant is the best of witnesses to the 
truth of my contention that denial of the spatial 
world is the extinction of thought. 

Or do you urge that this subjective idealism has 
now been generally abandoned and absolute idealism 
put in its place? I answer that the latter still more 
openly testifies to the truth of my contention. For 
Hegel's Absolute, when closely scrutinized, turns out 
to be nothing but the "Totality" of all self-contra- 
dictions. His philosophy is literally an apotheosis 
of self-contradiction, "Contradiction is the moving 
spirit of the world." If that is true, then knowledge 
is certainly impossible. You can never attain to 
knowledge or even to rational thought by piling up 
self-contradictions, one on top of the other ; for the 



THE NEW REALISM 6 1 

more you have of the latter, the less you will have of 
the former. 

But Hegel's Dialectic proves, you protest, that 
this self-contradictoriness gradually diminishes — 
slowly evaporates, as it were — in the successive 
stages of mental development, until it finally disap- 
pears altogether in the Totality or Organic Whole. 
That, however, merely adds two more absurdities to 
the one noticed above. First, the idea of diminish- 
ing degrees of contradiction is a preposterous one; 
for a self-contradictory statement destroys itself; it 
states nothing and is nothing; and one nothing can 
be neither greater nor less than any other nothing. 
Second, the final evaporation of the self-contradic- 
toriness into a self-consistent Absolute or Totality 
is still more nonsensical. Hegel's only argument 
here is that the Totality must be self-consistent, be- 
cause there is outside of it no other Totality to con- 
tradict it. But would an Alexander Selkirk with 
his mind filled with maniacal and conflicting ideas 
be self-consistent merely because there was nobody 
else on his lonely island to contradict him? Hegel 
thinks that he would. 

Such then is my second proof of realism. First, 
it shows that the cancelling of the spatial world ren- 
ders all knowledge — even that of our own existence 
— impossible. Second, that both forms of idealism, 
when closely cross-examined, corroborate that con- 
clusion. 



62 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Section 5. Third Proof of Realism 

It would seem that I might rest content with the 
rigor and conclusiveness of the two proofs already 
presented. But to do so would lay my entire theory 
open to a very serious objection. Indeed, from the 
dawn of Greek philosophy down to the present day, 
it has been the fate of realism to be worsted, not 
through the weakness of its own positive proofs, but 
by the ingenious sophistries devised against it. 

Now, it may be said, that my view does not es- 
sentially differ from the familiar doctrine of the Un- 
knowable Cause. It is this objection which I seek 
here to meet and to convert into a third proof of 
realism. 

Cause has often been pronounced the vaguest of 
terms; "it appears at one time as a thing or object 
in space; in another as a prior phenomenon; and 
again, as a definite force identical with neither. In 
assigning the cause of the daily tides — for instance, 
you may name the Moon, or the rotation of the 
earth or the gravitation of the related masses." 1 
Thus confusion arises and endless controversy ; Sig- 
wart insists upon the causality of substance and 
argues strenuously against Wundt, who prefers a 
phenomenal cause. Mill reduces causes to "perma- 
nent possibilities"; Kant, to the unknowable thing 
in itself. Schopenhauer makes Force supreme and 
cause subordinate thereto. And this war of words 
still goes on. 

But the doctrine of the causal process ex- 

^artineau, Studies of Religion, I. p. 131. 



THE NEW REALISM 63 

pounded in Chapter II puts an end to these verbal 
contentions. It shows that neither the idea of sub- 
stance, nor of phenomenon, nor of force is syn- 
onymous with that of cause, that on the contrary 
they are but co-operating factors within the causal 
processes of Nature. Let us consider them in the 
order named. 

(1) Concerning substance I may seem to have 
said enough in the first section of this chapter. But 
there was one feature of that theme, and the most 
important one, which I there omitted to mention with 
the express purpose of using it more effectively here. 
I proved there that the fatal flaw in the philosophies 
of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz was that they be- 
gan with the category of substance as the primal and 
supreme one; whereas really it is a secondary and 
derivative one, only to be explained as subordinate 
to the causal category. Substantiality is causality, 
one of its specific phases. But the difficulty I did 
•not mention is this : Since the attributes are imma- 
nent in the substance, what is the discernible differ- 
ence between them that can warrant our distinguish- 
ing them as cause and effect? This difficulty has 
led many to deny the causality altogether. Thus the 
writer quoted just above admits that in both cases 
there is a relation of dependence, but adds : "on Sub- 
ject it is a dependence of co-existence; on Cause a 
dependence of origination. A substance manifests 
but does not make its attributes; a cause produces 
its effects." 1 



1 Ibid. p. 194. 



64 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

I answer first that the relation of the attribute to 
the substance is something more than co-existence 
or immanence; for the substance is the principal 
factor in the causal process that produces the attri- 
bute. Secondly, the attribute, although immanent 
in is yet different from the substance, since it is 
also dependent upon the other factors in the process 
producing it ; the weight of a body for instance de- 
pends upon the earth's attraction; its color upon 
the ether-waves, etc. 

Let not the reader slight this as undue subtility. 
Clear insight here is the key that unlocks some of 
the darkest chambers in philosophy. From lack of 
such insight Martineau refuses "to invest external 
things as such with causality," thus virtually an- 
nihilating them, and so falls back into an obsolete 
occasionalism. He says that he "cannot consent to ac- 
cept of entity as synonymous with cause." There is 
no need that he should. No finite entity is a com- 
plete cause ; but it is a perceptible and indispensable 
factor in many processes of causation. 

(2) It hardly seems needful to add anything to 
the proof given in the first section of Chapter II. 
that sequence is not causality. It may be well, how- 
ever, to renew the caution against regarding each 
member in a series of effects as the cause of the next 
succeeding member. Obvious as this error is, it has 
been a very frequent and a very disastrous one. It 
gave rise to that chimera of Dual Causality so no- 
ticeable in the speculation of Spinoza 1 and of Kant ; 

1 Calkins, Persistent Problems of Philosophy. Also 
Fullerton. 



THE NEW REALISM 65 

all three of the latter's Critiques are virtually based 
upon this doctrine of two kinds of causality. 

(3) Turn now to the third theory, Cause is 
Force. Schopenhauer, above all others, is the 
doughty champion of this view. He did a real ser- 
vice to philosophy by reducing all of Kant's cate- 
gories to that of cause; all the rest are "blind win- 
dows." But unable to break away from the Kantian 
illusionism, he undid all that he had done by degrad- 
ing cause itself into something derivative and sec- 
ondary — in fact, into virtual nothingness. Cause 
and effect, he says, are the changes which are bound 
to necessary succession in time. But behind them 
is Force, always and everywhere present, ubiquitous 
and inexhaustible, in virtue of which all causes 
operate. It is that which gives to causes their 
causality, that is, their ability to produce effects 
and from which therefore they only borrow this 
ability. 

But this now widely prevalent view dissolves 
before my principle of the causal process. Indeed, 
Schopenhauer's own words unveil the source of his 
error. He says: "The cause is always, like its ef- 
fect, a single thing, a single change." But that is 
a flat contradiction of the great maxim of all induc- 
tive science, that no finite cause is ever single, but 
always a complex process ; by clinging to that truth, 
as I shall show in the chapter upon induction, she 
has won all her wondrous triumphs. And by 
delving somewhat deeper into this inductive princi- 
ple of the causal process, we gain an insight into 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

that much disputed mystery, the nature of Force. 
We see that while extended things form the visible 
factor in every process of natural causation, force 
is the unseen, the imperceptible factor. Nor is our 
knowledge limited to this negative and yet very sug- 
gestive mark of imperceptibility. The marks men- 
tioned by Schopenhauer — its ubiquity and inexhausti- 
bleness — also really belong to it. And above all else 
one feature that he did not mention, its uniformity. 
That is what science means by her doctrine of the 
conservation of energy — the conviction that force 
works by methods absolutely uniform and invari- 
able. Thus, strange to say, our knowledge of the 
invisible factor is the very means by which we come 
to an ever-deepening, widening knowledge of the 
visible. 

The cause, then, is neither mere substance, nor 
phenomenon, nor a kind of force. On the contrary, 
it is a complex of all these combined in a unitary 
and uniform causal process. Let us see now what 
bearing this view has upon the objection that the sub- 
stance or thing is but a name for the Unknowable 
Cause of its qualities. First, I repeat the compre- 
hensive answer already given, that if the thing is 
unknowable apart from its qualities, so are the 
qualities apart from the thing. Second, the thing is 
known as that which determines the specific char- 
acter of a quality ; the other factors are general con- 
ditions giving only general results. Third, the thing 
is known as the one, persistent factor in each and 
all the many causal processes whereby its qualities 



THE NEW REALISM 6j 

are produced. Thus its known relationship with 
other things and agencies widens out immensely, and 
our knowledge of it is correspondingly enlarged. 
We know the object perceived not merely through 
its casual, superficial relations to the perceiving sub- 
ject, but through its deep-lying, wide-spreading, es- 
sential relations to that illimitable host of other fac- 
tors which co-operate with it in the production of its 
attributes. It is the climax of silliness to talk of a 
thing thus widely and luminously known as an Un- 
knowable Cause. 

Fourth and above all else, the thing is always a 
perceptible factor, while the other factors have to be 
demonstrated as indispensable by the strict experi- 
mental methods of inductive science. A causal pro- 
cess, as a whole, then, is not seen or given by sensi- 
ble experience. Hume was right there; and his 
famous problem would forever remain insoluble 
were it not for my demonstration that the cancelling 
of causality means the extinction of thought. The 
sole essential function of thought being thus proved 
to be the disclosure of causality, it follows that 
thought is fundamentally a revelation of the unseen. 

Thus the new realism is lifted far above that mire 
of materialism into which previous forms of realism 
have sunk. It accomplishes what both subjective and 
absolute idealism have failed to accomplish by their 
assumption that the visible universe was an illusion. 
Without appealing to any such nonsense, the new 
realism demonstrates the existence of the invisible. 

What seemed then a weighty objection has been 



68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

overcome and converted into a crowning proof of 
realism. But there are certain perplexities concern- 
ing space and time which have heretofore defied 
solution ; these I hope to disentangle in the next two 
chapters, and then our proof will be complete. 



CHAPTER V 

SPACE 

Section II. Perceptual and Conceptual Space 

All the perplexities and supposed self-contradic- 
tions that from time immemorial have clustered 
around the thought of space seem of late to be focal- 
izing themselves upon the contrast between space 
as perceived and as conceived. On the one hand, 
conceptual space is regarded as one, homogeneous, 
continuous infinitely extended and also infinitely di- 
visible. On the other hand, perceptual space seems 
somehow to be devoid of all positive characteristics ; 
it exhausts itself in negating, pointblank, all 
the characteristics of conceptual space. Thus per- 
ceptive and reflective thought are made to ap- 
pear in hopeless, irreconcilable conflict with each 
other. 

At first Kant seemed little mindful of this antag- 
onism. Indeed in the Analytic the very pith of his 
argument for the ideality of space is that it is neither 
a percept nor a concept. But later on in discussing 
the Antinomies the tangles involved in the thought 
of space as infinitely divisible begin to trouble him : 
he will not say that space is a whole really com- 
pounded of an infinite number of parts, but at any 
rate it is ideally so compounded. And in the 
"Critique of Judgment" he tentatively suggests this 
opposition of space perceived and conceived. At 



JO PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

present the entire space-problem seems to hinge 
upon this alleged discrepancy. 

But for two good reasons it seems to me all a ! de- 
lusion. First, my perfect faith in the unity of thought 
forbids my believing in any such antithesis between 
perception and conception. Secondly, all this ap- 
parent antagonism vanishes instantly in the light of 
our fundamental law that the essence of all think- 
ing is a discriminating between cause and effect. 
What has been erroneously regarded as a distinction 
between conceptual and perceptual space is really 
a distinction betzveen space and the spatial relations 
of things. And the two, so far from being in any 
antagonism with each other, are really related as 
cause and effect. 

For consider first the spatial relations — distances, 
directions, length, breadth, etc. — which are certainly 
perceptible. Mark that it is not said here that space 
is the sole or entire cause of these spatial relations. 
We have got beyond that great error which has 
wrought so much confusion and darkness in phi- 
losophy — to wit, the failure to see that an effect is 
not the product of a single cause, but of a causal 
process interweaving many factors. Particular 
things are also indispensable factors in the produc- 
tion of spatial relations, which otherwise would not 
be perceptible. But so also is unchanging space. 

Do you object that space is inactive, does nothing, 
neither produces nor resists motion, and therefore 
cannot be a factor in causal processes ? Lotze espe- 
cially makes this inactivity of space one of his main 



SPACE 71 

reasons for denying its real existence ; the essence 
of anything, he argued, consists in its behavior, what 
it does, and since space does nothing, it is nothing. 
I answer that if there is no space there can be no 
motion, hence things are non-existent, for they act 
only by moving; furthermore thought cannot exist 
for it neither moves nor is movable. In fine, Lotze's 
principle is a sheer plunge into the abyss of nihilism. 

There is then no reason for denying or doubting 
the evident fact that space is a universal and indis- 
pensable factor in all processes whence the spatial 
properties of things result. "A medium or instru- 
ment is not necessarily either an agent or agency. 
It may be perfect just in proportion as it is itself 
inert, neither increasing, nor diminishing, nor in any 
way modifying what is transmitted or effected 
through it." 1 I quote these words as especially valu- 
able for my purpose, because they were written by 
an eminent idealist without any reference, of course, 
to the use I am here making of them. 

Note now the follies and contradictions amidst 
which famous philosophers have entangled them- 
selves through failure to discern the real relationship 
between space and the spatial properties of things. 
Think of Berkeley troubled by a sort of rivalry 
which he imagines between space and God. He re- 
coils from "that dangerous dilemma — to wit, of 
thinking either that Real Space is God or else that 
there is something besides God which is eternal, un- 
created infinite, indivisible, immutable. Both of 

1 Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. p. 240. 



72 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

which may justly be thought pernicious and absurd 
notions. . . . Which doctrine, how unworthy so- 
ever it may seem of the Divine Nature, yet I do not 
see how we can get clear of it so long as we adhere 
to the received opinions." 1 But look at it in the 
light of my doctrine. When space is conceived as 
one of the universal factors in all the physical proc- 
esses of the universe, is it thereby made co-equal 
with the God who devised, established and maintains 
these processes? 

Turn now to Kant. As early as the Dissertation 
of 1770, we find him arguing that only his theory 
of space as a form or figment of the mind will ac- 
count for the two main difficulties of the question; 
first, the fixation of relative positions in space; sec- 
ond, the difference of space from the particular ma- 
terial or spatial properties of things. But the first 
of these is but a dim view of the fact that all spatial 
properties of things are dependent upon and would 
be impossible without one continuous space. The 
second that space and spatial properties, although so 
closely united, are yet very different ; for it is the pe- 
culiar and supreme characteristic of every causal re- 
lation that it at once differentiates the cause from 
the effect and yet unites them by the firmest of all 
bonds. 

Take now a more recent case. " Empty space," 
says Bradley — "space without some quality (visual 
or muscular) which in itself is more than spatial — is 
an unreal abstraction. It cannot be said to exist, 

Principles of Knowledge, §117. 






space 73 

for the reason that it cannot by itself have any 
meaning. When any man realizes what he has got 
in it he finds that he always has a quality that is 
more than extension. But if so, how this quality is 
to stand to the extension is an insoluble problem." 1 

I answer that of course the attribute of extension- 
is not given in isolation. As he says in another 
place to which he refers : 2 "If visual it must be col- 
ored." There must also be "a 'what' that is ex- 
tended." And other differences which "clearly are 
not merely extended." All these are interconnected 
effects or products of various processes in all of 
which some particular thing and continuous space are 
the indispensable factors. In fine, Bradley's demand 
that isolated extension be presented to sense is as 
absurd as to demand that motion be presented apart 
from some moving body. 

In the next paragraph some dim recognition of 
the truth seems to flit across Bradley's mind. But 
he puts it aside with another denial — in new terms 
— "that A (extension) exists and works naked." 

Section 2. The Continuity of Space 

A very great advance toward the solution of the 
space-problem is made, it seems to me, by our view 
of real space and the spatial properties of things as 
very different and yet as united by a causal relation. 
We have seen how swiftly many of the perplexities 



Appearance and Reality, p. 38. 

IhiA i™ TT T« 



Hbid, pp. 17, 18. 



74 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

which have led thinkers like Berkeley, Kant and 
Bradley into sheer illusionism, vanish before this 
simple apprehension. Furthermore, it completely 
disposes of a still more widely prevailing notion 
that space is naught but the mere sum of these 
spatial properties — extension, direction, distances, 
etc. 

But there still remains one elemental characteris- 
tic of space unaccounted for. How do we know that 
space is absolutely continuous? Certainly we can- 
not perceive — see with our eyes or feel with our 
fingers that there are no crevices or holes in it. We 
cannot make the answer that used to be made to this 
and a host of other difficulties — the appeal to intui- 
tions, to universal and necessary truths. For com- 
mon sense, although far more truthful than the aca- 
demic conceit of wisdom which scorns it, is yet not 
infallible. Nor does even the New Mathematics 
seem able to give answer; it offers no proof of the 
continuity of space except intuition or assumption. 

The way then seems wide open for my answer as 
follows. Pre-eminent among spatial properties per- 
ceived are those of distance or the separateness of 
things. Now what is meant by the separateness of 
objects is that there is space between them ; if there 
is no space between them they are not separate. 
Therefore it is demonstrably absurd to think of 
space itself as divisible into parts. For in order that 
the parts should be separate, there would have to be 
space between them, and consequently no separation 
of the parts. In other words, the division — either 



space 75 

actual or ideal — of space into parts is a contradic- 
tion in terms. 

Heretofore the divisibility of space has been ac- 
cepted almost as an axiom; from it all manner of 
antinomies and paradox have been evolved, espe- 
cially the speculation of Kant and his successors 
rests largely upon it : Spinoza alone suggests a con- 
trary opinion, but in a rather vague and faltering 
manner. And, although my demonstration of its in- 
divisibility seemed perfect, this unanimity troubled 
me. It was therefore comforting to find that such 
a master-mind as Adamson had reached the same 
conclusion. He says : "The representation of a given 
space as made up of the fractional parts into which 
we may divide it, overlooks the difference between 
the actual representation thus gained and the con- 
crete whole which is disclosed when the question is 
asked : What then really separates the parts from one 
another?" 1 

Furthermore I think that I can explain the precise 
origin of this virtual unanimity of error concerning 
the divisibility of space. It has sprung from blind- 
ness to the distinction between one infinite space and 
the finite spatial properties of things. For while the 
former is absolutely continuous and indivisible, the 
latter are manifestly divisible, even infinitely so. 
And the reason thereof is made very clear by what 
has already been established. We have seen that 
spatial properties are not results of space alone, but 
of space and things together; or more definitely, 

development of Modern Philosophy, p. 298. 



y6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

they are products of processes in which both space 
and things are indispensable factors. And as thus 
partially produced and limited by things, spatial 
properties have derived from things their character- 
istic of divisibility. But theorists have erroneously 
transferred this divisibility to space itself, to which 
it cannot possibly belong. Thus modern philosophy 
from its start is infected with a fatal error. For 
once more I affirm that the divisibility — either in- 
finite or finite — of space is a contradiction in terms. 

Section 3. The Discreteness of Space 

Some attention must also be given to the puzzle 
so much exploited by recent disciples of Hegel — the 
alleged contradiction between the continuity and the 
discreteness of space. For example, I have just al- 
luded to Adamson's having caught a glimpse of the 
real proof of space's continuity. But he did not 
fully realize the significance of this insight. And 
so he soon asserts a second and contradictory feature 
in space, its discreteness, "the inexhaustibility, the 
endless capacity for being divided of a really con- 
tinuous whole. But it is all a chimera. The two 
contradictory features do not belong to the same ob- 
ject. The continuity belongs to one infinite and im- 
mutable space. The discreteness or divisibility be- 
longs to the countless host of finite, ever-changing 
spatial relations of things to each other. 

"But no one quite equals Bradley in this art of in- 
venting contradictions. First, he proves that space 
is not a relation. The mere fact that we are driven 



SPACE 7J 

always to speak of its parts is sufficient evidence. 
What could be the parts of a relation?" But as I 
have shown we are driven to speak of it as not hav- 
ing parts. 

Second, he proves that it is nothing but a relation. 
But how can that which is absolutely one be a re- 
lation ? These are but samples of the follies that is- 
sue from thinking of space as divided into parts. 
And they are all set aside by the simple question: 
If space has parts, what then separates the parts ? 

Section 4. The Reality of Space 

( 1 ) Let us consider in course the four celebrated 
arguments by which Kant is supposed to have an- 
nihilated the reality of space. The first is : "Space is 
not an empirical experience which has been derived 
from external experience. . . .* No experience of 
the external relations of sensible things could yield 
the idea of space, because without the consciousness 
of space there would be no external experience what- 
ever." Now all that is a foolish truism; it says 
nothing except that without the idea of space I could 
not have the idea of externality. Again the doctrine 
that space is an illusion, a mere idea inside of me 
makes it impossible that things should be outside of 
me or of each other. 

(2) "Space is a necessary a-priori idea which is 
presupposed in all external perception. By no effort 
can we think space away, etc." The first proof 
seemed absurd enough, but this far surpasses it in ab- 
surdity. We must believe space to be real, we can- 
critique, Pure Reason, Tran. Esthetic, § I. 



?8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

not think it away; therefore, it must be an il- 
lusion ! 

(3) "Space is not a general conception of the re- 
lation of things but a pure perception. . . . It is 
true that we speak as if there were many spaces, but 
we really mean only parts of one and the same 
space." That argument I have exploded by demon- 
strating in Section 2 that space has no parts, is ab- 
solutely continuous. 

(4) Kant's final argument is very vague, almost 
unintelligible. But both its vagueness and its falsity 
are explained in Section 1. There I have proved 
that the much mooted distinction between perceptual 
and conceptual space is really a distinction between 
space and the spatial relations of things; and that 
the ignoring of this obvious distinction is the tap- 
root of almost all the errors and paradoxes infesting 
the spatial problem. 

Kant's four proofs of the ideality of space are 
amazingly feeble and empty. Dissatisfaction with 
them soon led his successors to take another path; 
but a retrograde one toward the theories of Berkeley 
and Malebranche. Kant's doctrine of space as a 
mental form leaves everything at loose ends ; the ap- 
plication of the form does not determine whether a 
given object shall appear as a cube or some other fig- 
ure; the choice between the various forms is alto- 
gether arbitrary. But plainly we have no such lib- 
erty as that; the relations of things in our subjective 
forms of space are quite independent of our will; 
try our best we cannot conceive an inch as longer 



space 79 

than a mile or a wagon-wheel as triangular. Hence 
arose absolute idealism; the determining factor in 
our spatial experience was not the individual mind, 
but the divine or absolute mind. But that seems 
only a sort of burlesque realism. What common 
sense calls a universe of things, this new view calls 
God or the Absolute. 

There is then nothing self-contradictory in space 
properly conceived. The alleged contradictions have 
sprung from ignoring two obvious facts : first, that 
space has no parts; second, that spatial relations — 
distance, direction, figure, etc. — are effects or prod- 
ucts of a causal process wherein both real space and 
real things are factors. Cancel either kind of reality, 
and you make knowledge and thought impossible. 



CHAPTER VI 

TIME 

Section i. Temporal Relations 

My solution of the space problem, then, rests upon 
the distinction between space and the spatial rela- 
tions of things. All thinkers have recognized, more 
or less vaguely, that distinction. Newton, especially, 
insisted upon it most strenuously. The common 
view, he said, wrongly supposes that sensuous time 
and space are the true ones; they define them ac- 
cording to their relations to common things. But 
besides these there must be an absolute space and 
time not determined by their relations to anything 
external. Instead of absolute and sensuous space — 
terms having a dogmatic and misleading ring — I 
have put the simple facts, space and the spatial rela- 
tions of things. Then by showing that these two 
terms are to each other as cause to its effects, the 
antinomies and other perplexities infesting the space 
problem have been made to vanish. 

I have now to show that the problem of time, with 
its still darker enigmas, can likewise be solved by 
clear insistence upon the distinction between time 
and the temporal relations of things. 

In order to outline my meaning let me first refer 
to that famous, oft-quoted passage from one of the 
world's greatest thinkers, St. Augustine: "What 
then is time ? If no one asks me, I know ; if I try to 



TIME 



81 



explain it to one who asks, I do not know ; yet I say 
with confidence that I know. But if nothing passed 
away, there would be no past time ; if nothing were 
to come there would be no future time; if nothing 
were, there would be no present time. Yet those 
two times, past and future, how can they be when 
the past is not now, and the future is not yet ? As 
for the present, if it were always present, and did 
not pass over into the past, it would not be time but 
eternity." 1 

Now when Augustine says that if no one asks 
him, he knows what time is, he means that he has a 
clear, distinct perception of temporal relations or 
periods of time. He fully apprehends the difference 
between before and after, to-day and yesterday, to- 
day and to-morrow, etc. But what he thus knows 
so confidently is something not simple but vastly 
complex — not time isolated and by itself, but time 
inextricably intertwined with and obscured by a host 
of other agencies — the revolutions of the earth in 
its orbit or on its axis, the sand in the hour-glass, 
and so on — all necessary for the production of that 
composite result, a temporal relation or period, 
which he really apprehends. With these temporal 
relations or periods, Augustine is perfectly familiar. 
It is of them that he is thinking when he says, if no 
one asks me, I know. 

But, he continues, if any one asks me — in other 
words, if he becomes critical and tries to probe be- 
neath the surface — then I know not. That, too, I 

Confessions, Book XI. ch. 14. 



82 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

think, may be explained from our present point of 
view. Augustine, great and wonderful thinker as 
he was, was yet human and he fell into one of the 
most persistent of human errors — to wit, the ani- 
mistic tendency to conceive all objects of thought in 
the similitude of things. In that fashion he con- 
ceives of time as an extended thing divisible into 
parts ; in other words, he thinks of time as the sum 
or aggregate of all temporal relations or periods. 
But the moment he does that he finds himself in a 
hornet's nest of inexplicable enigmas and contra- 
dictions. For the present has no duration ; make it 
as short or small as you will, it is still always capa- 
ble of being divided into a before and after, a past 
and a future; it is but the plane which, without 
thickness, divides the bygone from that which is to 
come. The present, then, so far as duration is con- 
cerned, is zero ; but the past has ceased to exist, and 
the future 1 is not yet. Time, therefore, according to 
this definition, is the sum or aggregate of three zeros 
or non-existents. 

I have given here but the gist of the difficulty 
which can easily be amplified into many minor rid- 
dles and contradictions. No writer heretofore has 
been able to surmount them. Let us see, then, what 
the doctrine of this volume will accomplish. 

(I) I begin with the declaration that Time is 
one and indivisible. The proof thereof, like the 
proof of the indivisibility of space, lies in the simple 
question : If time can be divided into parts, what is 
it that separates or stands between the divided 



TIME 83 

parts ? The force of that question is even more con- 
clusive in the case of time than of space. It seems 
in some sort an excusable error to mistake the divi- 
sion of things for a division of the space they oc- 
cupy; at least, most philosophers have made that 
mistake. But it is a gratuitous, a wholly unpardon- 
able blunder to think of time as thus divided. What 
could possibly separate the divided parts ? Certainly 
it could not be either space or things. Imagine two 
parts of time, one on the one side and the other on 
the other side of a spatial point or of an extended 
line ! Nor could the divider be another part of time ; 
for then there would be no separation, but continu- 
ous, undivided time. 

(II) But you ask, if time is indivisible, how can 
there be a multiplicity of temporal relations or pe- 
riods? The answer lies in the principle I have al- 
ready announced that time is the partial cause or 
predominant factor in the process producing the 
many periods. And surely a cause in order to pro- 
duce many separate effects, need not itself be di- 
vided. On the contrary, the very nature of a cause 
is to produce an indefinite multiplicity of effects. 
One man may take many steps, one wheel make 
many revolutions ; but the sum of all his steps is not 
the man, nor is the sum of all its revolutions the 
wheel. There is no contradiction, then, between the 
indivisibility of time and the countless multiplicity 
of temporal relations or periods. 

Let me add that one of the acutest and most em- 
inent of English thinkers — Adamson — has also rec- 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

ognized this indivisibility of time. He says : "But 
just as little as space is made up of unextended 
points, so little is time made up of unchanging pres- 
ent moments." 1 But, unfortunately, while he has 
divined the truth, he has mistaken the ground on 
which that truth is based. He indeed rejects the 
Kantian doctrine that time is wholly subjective, but 
adds : "We may certainly allow that our representa- 
tion of a changing reality, in the form of this intui- 
tion of time, has features that depend solely on the 
position of the subject in the sum-total of reality, 
and that, therefore, it is to that extent subjective in 
character." 2 But this admission of a partial subjec- 
tivity is fatal; logically it must end in a thorough 
Hindu illusionism. But this gulf of subjectivity my 
exposition has at every point avoided. Both time 
and temporal relations, in their existence, working 
and character, are altogether objective. What 
Adamson mistakes for a subjective element is but 
the shadow of those other factors — things, space, 
motion — which must combine with time in one 
causal process in order that temporal relations or 
periods may be produced. 

III. Another fact which the denier of time en- 
tirely overlooks is that not all changes are motions. 
A change of feeling does not mean that feeling has 
really moved from one position to another, say from 
pleasure to pain or from sorrow to joy. A change 
in thinking — for instance, from thinking of a lamp- 



development of Modern Philosophy, p. 313. 
2 Ibid., p. 314. 



TIME 85 

post to thinking of the stars — does not mean that 
our mental state has actually traversed the immense 
distance between those objects. But the idealist 
takes it for granted that change must be motion. 
Thus a distinguished American thinker says : "If we 
say that time as a whole stands we deny the time- 
idea. Past, present and future co-exist, and there 
is no assignable reason for the change from the fu- 
ture to the past. It is equally impossible to find in 
a standing time any ground for change. But we 
fare no better with the notion of a flowing time. If 
we say that time flows we must ask whence and 
whither. From the future to the past or from the 
past to the future? But both past and future are 
dimensions of time, and it seems absurd to speak of 
time as flowing into or out of itself. Such a view is 
as impossible as the thought of a moving space. 
. . . And finally when we say that time as a whole 
flows we need another time for it to flow in. . . . 
Both views involve not merely mystery, but incon- 
sistency and contradiction." 1 

Undoubtedly they do. For neither standing nor 
flowing — that is, rest or motion are terms that can 
be rationally applied to time. You might as well 
ask whether love is triangular or not? For, only 
things move; and time is not an extended thing hav- 
ing a position in space. In fine, the inconsistency 
and contradiction which our author laments, are but 
the evil fruitage of the animistic or hypostasizing 



x Bowne, Metaphysics, pp. 169, 170. 



86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

tendency — the most persistent and fatal disease of 
human thought. 

(IV) But there is still another objection possible. 
Does not your account of time as the cause of tem- 
poral relations or periods leave it vague and indef- 
inite, a sort of unknowable cause after the style of 
Kant's thing in itself? I answer by once more re- 
calling the corollary to my fundamental thesis : the 
cause is known only through its effects, and con- 
versely the effects through their cause. In that light 
time becomes the best known, the most luminous of 
all objects. For it is thus causally connected with a 
vaster and more various range of results than any 
other. Space cannot begin to compare with it in 
this respect. For space enters only into our experi- 
ence of the outer world ; but time enters everywhere, 
into our experience of the inner as well as the outer 
world. And the many diversities between these two 
realms adds still more to the fullness and richness of 
our conceptions of time. In a word, there is noth- 
ing known to man which does not cast a reflected 
light upon his knowledge of time. 

(V) The infinitude of time, although it has been 
in current philosophy a theme for endless quibbling 
and dispute, may here be treated very concisely. 
For almost any reader can see that the proof of the 
infinitude of space from its continuity may readily 
be transferred to the continuity of time. But to 
make assurance doubly sure, let me put the argu- 
ment in another form. If time is finite or limited, 
it must be limited by something. But a something 



TIME 87 

— whether personal or impersonal — cannot exist 
without time to exist in, and therefore in putting an 
end to time it would put an end to itself; and so 
there would be no limit. 

(VI) Another objection, much favored by ideal- 
istic theists, is that the reality of space and time 
would lead to a hopeless plurality of first principles. 
Besides God there would then be two other infini- 
tudes independent of Him. But that trouble is 
quelled by my exposition. For, neither time nor 
space is by itself a complete cause, but simply a 
factor in the causal processes of the universe. God 
alone is the complete cause who plans, creates and 
maintains those processes. 

(VII) Thus we have reached a theory of space 
and time which seems to answer conclusively all the 
objections ordinarily urged against their reality. 
And I now add as a decisive confirmation of this 
theory the fact that there is really no other theory. 
For, the idealism which simply denies the existence 
of space and time can hardly be accounted, in any 
strict sense of the term, a theory of space and time. 
And on the other hand, realism, in so far as it at- 
tempts to cope with the real difficulties of the subject, 
seems to end in a hopeless tangle of contradictions 
rather than in a consistent, systematic theory. A 
very vivid — not to say glaring — example of this is 
presented in the speculations of Prof. Fullerton, a 
distinguished American philosopher. Through 
some seventy closely printed pages he labors long 
and hard with the difficulties involved in his peculiar 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

conception of space and time. His conception I will 
not attempt to describe, as it seems to me utterly 
fantastical and unintelligible. It is enough to give 
in his own words the final upshot of the whole mat- 
ter. 

"It may be objected again," he says, "that exten- 
sion can never be built up out of the non-extended 
— that if one element of a given kind has, taken 
alone, no extension at all, two or more such ele- 
ments together cannot have any either. I answer 
that a straight line has no angularity at all, and yet 
two straight lines may obviously make an angle; 
that one man is not in the least a crowd, but that 
one hundred men may be; that no single tree is a 
forest, but that many trees together do make a for- 
est; that a uniform expanse of color is in no sense 
a variegated surface, but that several such together 
do make a variegated surface." 1 And in the next 
chapter he solves the problem of time in the same 
preposterous manner — by affirming "that we can 
manufacture time by simply putting together ele- 
ments which have no duration at all." 2 

Two or more zeros may make a unit! Surely 
when modern philosophers of good repute are driven 
to such silliness as that, there is urgent need of a 
new philosophy. 

Section 3. The Indivisibility of Time 
In addition to the general theory of time given 



System of Metaphysics, pp. 192, 193. 
2 Ibid., p. 208. 



TIME 89 

in the preceding section, I wish here to specially em- 
phasize a principle, never noticed in any philosophic 
system, and yet of supreme importance — one of the 
keys to the solution of that problem of time which 
philosophy has despaired of solving. That principle 
is simply this : Every attempt to conceive time as di- 
visible destroys it. 

Consider the familiar argument disproving time's 
existence, which has stood unanswered for centuries. 
The present has no duration and is not time at all. 
It is but the plane which without thickness divides 
past and future. Time then is not made up of past, 
present and future, but of past and future only. But 
neither the past nor the future now exists ; therefore 
time does not exist. 

That argument, as I said, has never been an- 
swered. Many have accepted it as proving time's 
unreality, others have merely ignored it. And yet 
all that it really proves is, not time's non-existence, 
but its indivisibility. Time, as I have shown, has 
no parts. The past, the present, and the future are 
not the components of time; on the contrary, they 
are the products of time in its correlation with 
things. In fine, when you conceive time as divisible 
into parts you destroy it. 

But let no one understand me as claiming that no 
previous thinkers have recognized that time has no 
parts. Both the Eleatic and the Heracleitean 
schools recognized that truth. Diodorus of the 
Megaric school did so still more explicitly. 1 Even 
^rote, Plato, I. p. 21, and IV. p. 228, note. 



90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Aristotle held that the present was not a part of 
time, but a mere boundary between past and future. 
So in later times did Hobbes, Locke and many- 
others. But for all these thinkers it was a truth but 
half-seen, therefore, full of mystery and paradox. 
How paradoxical it was, for instance, to affirm — as 
they all did — that the present did not exist, while 
the past and the future did. But all such absurdi- 
ties vanish before my discovery of the crucial dis- 
tinction between time and the temporal relations of 
things. A temporal relation or period is the joint 
product of time and some changing things; there- 
fore, it derives something of its character from both. 
The present year, for instance, exists and will exist 
until the earth completes its present revolution 
around the sun. Past and future years do not now 
exist, because all other revolutions are either ended 
or have not yet begun. 

Finally, let me refer to Bergson's philosophy, 
which just now is attracting much applause, as a 
signal proof of my contention. ( i ) The very basis 
of this philosophy is the sharp antithesis between 
two kinds of time ; the one kind, pure duration ; the 
other, a fictitious time that is merely spatial. That 
evidently is but a dim, distorted glimpse of my dis- 
tinction between time and the temporal relations of 
things. (2) Duration, Bergson conceives as a suc- 
cession of mental states; but these states are never 
so distinct from each other that they can be counted ; 
as he never tires of repeating, they "melt into and 



TIME 91 

permeate each other. 1 . . . We must distinguish 
between the multiplicity of juxtaposition and of in- 
terpenetration." 2 That, too, is a vague vision of 
the great truth that time has no parts. But like Her- 
bart in a similar case, Bergson fails to see that in- 
terpenetration presupposes extension or space, that 
only things can melt into and permeate each other. 
(3) Another point argued at great length is, that 
duration not being extended in space is immeasur- 
able. When I try to measure time by watching the 
hands of a clock, "I do not measure duration as 
seems to be thought. I merely count simultaneities, 
which is very different." 3 The fallacy there lies in 
failing to see that space in itself is just as immeasur- 
able as time in itself. We know them both only 
through their effects, that is, through the spatial and 
temporal relations of things. In the one case we 
measure not pure space, but the distance and dimen- 
sions of things ; in the other case, not pure duration, 
but temporal periods — hours, days, years, etc. — are 
measured by the motions of things. (4) But this 
theory of time as a double-headed monster grows 
still more absurd when it tries to account for mo- 
tion. It claims that motion has two elements, the 
space traversed and the act of traversing it ; of these 
elements the first is divisible and the second indivisi- 
ble. In both cases the exact opposite is the truth. 
Space, as I have demonstrated, is continuous or in- 



J Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 104, 164, 231, 237, etc. 
'Ibid., p. 75, note. 
'Ibid., p. 108. 



92 PHILOSOHY OF THE FUTURE 

divisible. The act of traversing it is divisible into 
as many steps as we choose. 

By means of such fallacies Bergson pretends to 
prove human freedom; but of this more hereafter. 
Here I seek only to show that the contradictions in- 
festing the time-concept are due to a false conception 
of time — mainly to a confusing of time with the 
temporal relations of things. In the previous chap- 
ters the space concept was similarly explained. 
These contradictions thus eliminated, the proof of 
realism given in Chapter IV. is perfected. The 
denial of the world in space and time is tantamount 
to utter nihilism; it involves the complete collapse 
and extinction of thought. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CONCEPT 

Section i. Plato's View 

Few events in history are more memorable than 
the discovery begun by Socrates and completed by 
Plato that concepts essentially signify the unchang- 
ing and the causal. It was not only a great truth, 
but also a deep-hidden one. It was a truth contra- 
dicted by all appearances. In the first place the 
double import of the concept — its intension and ex- 
tension — imparted to it an air of ambiguity and in- 
coherence which the thought of twenty-three cen- 
turies has not been able to dispel: philosophy ever 
since Plato's day has been little more than an endless 
dispute between Realists, Conceptualists and Nom- 
inalists concerning this complex mystery of the con- 
cept. And the second feature of the concept has 
been a still greater embarrassment. For, it seems 
a flat contradiction of the first feature. If the con- 
cept is static, immutable, eternally quiescent, how 
can it be an active cause ? And yet there it stands — 
the definition given by Xenocrates of the Platonic 
concept — "a cause serving as the unchanging type 
of all natural things." It was an immortal discov- 
ery. Nor is it in any wise a blot upon Plato's 
genius that his insight was not altogether clear 
and perfect. For in the then state of knowledge, 
as I shall show, it was impossible for any finite 



94 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

intellect to fully and finally interpret this Platonic 
vision. 

But what was then impossible the progress of 
science has now rendered perfectly feasible. What 
barred Plato from fully comprehending his splendid 
vision was the crude pre-scientific view of the rela- 
tion of the attributes to the thing as one of mere 
"inherence" — "occult qualities" within the thing. It 
was this view which Aristotle, that grand master of 
compromise, so shrewdly elaborated in his doctrine 
of universals in rem, opposing it to the Platonic 
doctrine of universals ante rem. I have already 
shown that this inherence theory renders any true 
knowledge either of the thing or its attributes im- 
possible, and leads straight to illusionism. Still 
truer is this in regard to the more complicated case 
of the concept or kind. For there is an evident con- 
nection of some sort between the qualities and the 
object qualified; to deny that would be sheer idiocy. 
But there is no such obvious connection between the 
sets of attributes belonging severally to different in- 
dividuals of the same kind or class. Hence theorists, 
whatever their school, have failed to find any unify- 
ing bond between these sets of attributes, except that 
of mere resemblance or similarity. And this feeling 
of resemblance, as I have repeatedly shown, is 
strictly no relation at all ; taken solely by itself, it is 
but the embryo — still-born — of a relation. It is the 
very type of all incoherence and self-contradiction; 
everything is at once like and not like everything 
else. And precisely here is the secret of that endless, 



THE CONCEPT 95 

triangular controversy between realists, nominalists 
and concepticalists. No one of them has ever been 
able to explain the specific or generic relationship 
between the individuals forming a class, except by 
the utterly absurd and unintelligible dictum that 
there was somehow "a common element" in them. 
All have fallen back upon the Fallacy of Resem- 
blance, and that is self-contradiction incarnate. 

All schools, I say, without exception. The Scot- 
tish philosophy of "common sense," with its short 
and easy method of "intuitions," the French and 
English empiricism, the Teutonic illusionism in all 
its varied phases of paradox — all are mired in this 
fallacy of resemblance, this nonsense of a common 
element in different things. Listen first to an able and 
eminent intuitionalist : "Herein lies the difference 
between the act of the brute and the act of a man in 
perceiving objects that are alike. In one sense the 
brute may perceive what is similar as readily as a 
man ; in some cases even more quickly, for his senses 
may be more keen. . . . But the brute does not 
attend and analyze as does a man. Hence he can- 
not discriminate, so as to abstract; or, at best, the 
degree and range of such efforts must be very lim- 
ited. His power to compare and discern the like and 
the unlike would for this reason be lame and feeble, 
if no other could be suggested. Should it be granted 
that the brute can discern similar attributes, it has 
no power at all to conceive or think the similar as 
the same." 1 



1 Porter, Intellectual Science, p. 331. 



g6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

If that is the case, then the brutes are more ra- 
tional than man. For the similar is not the same. 

The theory of the concept then, I think, has made 
no real progress, but rather retrograded since the 
days of Plato. The medieval schoolmen in the main 
adopted the Platonic view, modified, however, by 
Aristotle's supremacy. But in those pre-scientific 
times it was impossible to fully comprehend the real 
nature, the complexity, the vastness, and the minute, 
unchanging exactitude of Nature's processes of 
causation. Therefore they could not develop further 
what Plato had left in the germ. And modern phi- 
losophy, forgetting its Plato, despising the Middle 
Ages, is still mumbling senilities about the common 
element in things. 

I seek, therefore, to develop this germ of a great 
truth enfolded in the Platonic view of the concept 
as invariable and as a cause. 

Section 2. The Extension of Concepts 

There is a three-fold difficulty infesting the con- 
ceptual problem. The first is the question whether 
the concept has any objective counterpart in the 
outer world. The other two pertain to the double 
import, the two meanings of a concept, its extension 
and its intension. These three difficulties intertan- 
gle into a knot so hard that no one has as yet been 
able to untie it. 

Hegel sought to cut the knot by abolishing the 
outer world as mere "schein." But most real think- 



THE CONCEPT 97 

ers have now grown weary of this easy way of evad- 
ing difficulties; and I shall waste no time upon it. 

Hegel, however, deserves credit for his doctrine 
of the concrete universal ; it is not true, but there is 
a glimpse of verity in it. He saw that in the ortho- 
dox realism of the Middle Ages there was an ele- 
ment of truth that modern enlightenment had over- 
looked. He saw that the true universal was some- 
thing more than an abstract vacuity; nor was it 
merely an imaginary collection of resembling indi- 
viduals. In one passage, at least, he says that the 
true universal is not merely some common ele- 
ment in all of that kind; it is their Ground, their 
Substance. It is something pervading and deter- 
mining all the characteristics of each one and bind- 
ing together its qualities. Therein Hegel is draw- 
ing close to my theory of the concept as meaning, 
radically, a causal process. But he soon flies away 
into the inane, upon the wings of his celebrated 
metaphor about the "organic whole." 

And that metaphor is doubly impotent. In the 
first place the only whole which has real parts must 
be an extended thing; and so in abolishing the world 
of things, Hegel has abolished the very category 
upon which his scheme rested. In fine, he has sawed 
off the limb on which he was sitting. 

In the second place, nothing is gained by insist- 
ing, as he does, that the whole must be an organic 
whole. It is idle to repeat Aristotle's threadbare 
conceit about the hand severed from the body ceas- 
ing to be a hand. For that is no characteristic of 



98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

the organic as such ; throughout the plant-world, and 
in a large part of the animal world, this dissevering 
of the organism is the very means used, not for de- 
stroying, but for multiplying life. 

But turn now to another logician less addicted to 
metaphor and paradox — the staid, sober-minded, 
cautious Sigwart. And yet he seems equally certain 
that our concepts can have no objective counterpart. 
He says: "The peculiarity of thought is that its 
processes are incongruent with the existent to which 
they refer. There is nothing existent which agrees 
with the predicate idea in the same sense in which 
there is something which agrees with the subject 
idea." And he concludes, that "there can be no 
really objective truth so long as the universal as such 
has its existence only in our minds, and only the 
particular in reality." 1 

But in all that there is a great and grievous fal- 
lacy which from our present vantage ground can be 
shattered in a moment. It consists in misconstru- 
ing the universal as merely an imaginary collection 
of similar objects which thought sets before itself 
when it thinks the universal. But thought does 
nothing of the kind. When you think of redness, 
for instance, do you think of some vast aggregate of 
all the patches of red color in existence? Certainly 
not. You think rather of the particular patch of 
redness before you as one product or result of an 
optical process which is going on throughout the 
universe. In fine, sense gives the product the par- 
x Logic, I. p. 83, note. 



THE CONCEPT 99 

ticular red before my eyes ; thought reveals the proc- 
ess of causation whence that product results. Is 
there then any such incongruence, as Sigwart as- 
serts, between sense and thought ? On the contrary, 
they are not merely congruent, but indispensable to 
each other. Without sense there would be no 
thought ; and without thought we should be like ani- 
mals, beholding only a minute fraction of what we 
now behold. 

Furthermore there is not even that numerical 
antithesis between sense and thought which Sigwart 
imagines. The universal, that is, the process of pro- 
duction, is even more individual than the product 
perceived. For the particular perceived, redness, for 
instance, is fleeting, vanishes at night or the closing 
of our eyes. But the process of production is not 
only one, but changeless, will persist so long as the 
cosmos lasts. Thus Plato's pre-scientific vision is 
wondrously vindicated by modern science. 

Or take another example. Bradley says sarcasti- 
cally: "I see the little packs of dogs and the cats 
all sitting together, and rats and rabbits, etc." 1 
What is really ludicrous here is Bradley's view of a 
universal as a mere collection. The true essence of 
every natural kind is the process of production 
whence the individuals result. What tests the spe- 
cies of an animal is its power of reproducing indi- 
viduals of that species. What distinguishes the 
specific attributes of an object from its accidents fs 
that the former result from the specific process, and 
^ogic, p. 160. 



IOO PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

the latter from external, modifying agencies. But 
of this more in the last section of this chapter and 
in the chapter upon Induction. 

Section 3. The Intension of Concepts 
In the introduction to his Logic, Lotze announces 
that the peculiarity of thought which will govern 
the whole of his subsequent exposition is this: "It 
always consists in adding to the reproduction or sev- 
erance of a connection of ideas the accessory notion 
of a ground for their coherence or non-coherence.' ' 
Now that seems an anticipation of my own view, but 
it is not. At best it is but a dim glimpse of the truth, 
vitiated by fatal defects. 

In the first place it is but the old theory of the 
concept as a mere bundle of attributes mysteriously 
tied together. The attributes do not inhere in 
things, but they cohere, they stick together. The 
outcome is, of course, a thorough illusionism. At 
the end of the Logic we are told emphatically that 
concepts have no real existence. "Thus we find our- 
selves confirmed in our conviction that the Reality 
which we desire to recognize in the general notions 
which are created by our thought is a reality which 
is wholly dissimilar to Existence, and can only con- 
sist in Validity or being predicable of the Existent. " 1 
Thus we have the Kantian self-contradictoriness put 
in its baldest terms. Universals are valid, but non- 
existent; we are all forced to think them real, al- 
though we know that they are not real. Plato failed 



iLogic, §342. 



THE CONCEPT IOI 

according to Lotze, because the Greek language had 
no word for this absurd idea of validity. 

On the contrary, the concept, instead of being 
non-existent, stands for the very highest type of 
finite existence. We never actually perceive absolute 
individualities, but always vast complexes, made up 
of innumerable individuals. The material universe 
is such a complex. So is our little globe wherein 
countless things are interwoven together. So is each 
of what we call visible things, a complex of interact- 
ing molecules and atoms. And each of these atoms, 
according to the latest science, is made up of ions, 
electrons, vortex-rings — we know not what. But 
what stands forth sure, immutable, solid in this il- 
limitable maze are the processes — concentric rings of 
causation, so to speak — beginning with the Infinite 
Cause of all and ending with the infinitesimal. And 
these processes are what universals express. Surely, 
it is rash to declare them non-existent. 

But Lotze is not content with this paradox; he 
adds another and a still greater one. Concepts are 
not merely non-existent, but we cannot even form an 
idea of them. "The universal cannot claim to be 
called an idea. Words, like color or tone, are in 
truth only short expressions of logical problems 
whose solution cannot be compressed into the form 
of an idea. They are injunctions to our conscious- 
ness, to present to itself and to compare the idea of 
individual tones and colors, but in the act of so com- 
paring them to grasp the common element which 
our sensation testifies them to contain, but which 



102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

cannot by any effort of thought be really detached 
from their differences, and made the material of 
a new and equally perceptible idea." 1 

But that bubble I have already pricked. I have 
shown that there is no such common element inside 
of things requiring to be detached, etc.; such a 
phrase is upon its face a contradiction in terms. 
What experience really testifies to is the existence of 
a causal process, absolutely uniform, by which un- 
der varying circumstances the different colors are 
produced. 

At times, however, Lotze becomes a witness for 
my doctrine. He breaks loose from the superstition 
of the common element and turns to the truth. For 
example, he says : "Color as the common element of 
various colors is not a scientific idea or concept. 
. . . Discovery of a process (my italics) of light- 
waves, whose various rates constitute the various 
colors of the spectrum, gives the concept." 2 That is 
a clear, precise assertion of my principle that the es- 
sential meaning of the concept is a causal process. 

But Lotze is inconsistent, oscillates from one view 
to the other. And his wavering is manifestly due 
to his having thrust causality into the background 
and put into its place the vague idea of ground. For 
that he gave the usual excuse of his school. A cause 
may have its effect frustrated by some other cause; 
but a ground cannot be thus counteracted ; therefore, 
the latter has a wider range and a higher value than 



i-Ibid. p. 24. 

'Metaphysics, II. p. 88. 



THE CONCEPT IO3 

the former. But the exact opposite is the truth. 
The mathematical ground is never frustrated, be- 
cause it is confined to abstractions concerning empty 
space where all counteracting agencies are, of 
course, excluded. But cause widens out over the 
whole realm of existence and deals with every pos- 
sible object of thought; ground is but one of its 
species. Bosanquet concurs with Lotze, in virtu- 
ally discarding causality, but assigns another rea- 
son. Its gist is this: "What is merely essential to 
the effect is always something less than any com- 
bination of real things which will produce the effect, 
because every real thing has many properties ir- 
relevant to this particular effect. So if the cause 
means something real as a material cause is real, it 
cannot be invariable and essential." 1 

I answer that the properties of a thing are differ- 
ent effects, produced severally by its entering as cen- 
tral factor into different processes. Its heat, for in- 
stance, is produced by one combination or process; 
its weight by another. But Bosanquet claims that 
the causation is not invariable and essential, because 
the same combination or process does not produce all 
these different effects. Is not that superlatively 
absurd ? 

Section 4. Nominalism 

Considering this chaos of conflicting opinions 
about the concept, it is not surprising that many 
should wish to abolish it altogether. Thus Mill pro- 
essentials of Logic, p. 165. 



104 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

nounces it "nothing less than a misfortune that the 
words Concept, General Notion . . . should ever 
have been invented." Sir Wm. Hamilton declares 
that the concept cannot be realized in thought at 
all. His words are too well known to need quoting ; 
so I give but the first sentence: " Concepts express 
only a relation.'' For just there we have the root of 
the whole Nominalistic fallacy. Hamilton did not 
see that relations are of different kinds and different 
values. And it is because he has selected the most 
vague, self-contradictory and worthless of all rela- 
tions — to wit, the relation of likeness — as the one ex- 
pressed in concepts, that he scouts at concepts as 
worthless, unthinkable fictions. They cannot be 
represented in imagination, hence cannot be applied 
to any objects, and therefore cannot be realized in 
thought at all. 

I answer that conception is never a mere picturing 
process. Even the crudest thinking does not speak 
of one thing as like another, without some hint of 
that upon which the likeness depends. And the 
more exact, scientific and truthful our thinking be- 
comes, the more we insist upon tracing these vague 
resemblances back to the causal processes whence 
they result. But instead of repeating what already 
I have proved, let me call up both Mill and Hamil- 
ton as witnesses to the truth of my doctrine. For 
Hamilton says: "Though it is only by experience 
that we come to attribute an external unity to aught 
continuously extended, that is, consider it as a sys- 
tem or constitutive whole, still in so far as we do 



THE CONCEPT IO5 

thus consider it, we think, the parts as held together 
by a certain force; and the whole, therefore, as en- 
dowed with a power of resisting their distraction — 
only if it resists distraction do we view it as more 
than a fortuitous aggregation of many bodies. " 
And Mill endorses this as "one of the best and pro- 
foundest passages in all Sir Wm. Hamilton's writ- 
ings." 1 

The two leaders, then, of the rival schools of Eng- 
lish thought agree, in their wiser moments, that a 
concept is, after all, not a mere blurred picture of 
many objects, that in its deepest meaning it points 
to some power or process that binds together the 
bundle of attributes and resists their distraction. 
Even Hobbes has a passage to the same effect : "Ab- 
stract is that which in any subject denotes the cause 
of the concrete name. . . . And these causes of 
names are the same with the causes of our concep- 
tions, namely, some power of action or affection of 
the thing conceived." 2 Thus all three of these 
famous thinkers show themselves in their deeper 
thinking as dissatisfied with their Nominalism, as 
vaguely recognizing that concepts, after all, are not 
fictitious unities, mean something more than their in- 
tension or extension or both these together — are, in 
fine, attempts to comprehend those causal processes 
of Nature, the full discovery of which is the goal of 
human thinking and knowing. 

At the risk of some repetition, let me comment 

Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, II. p. 67, note. 
'Mill, Logic, Bk. L, ch. 5, § 3. 



!06 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

briefly upon another grave error concerning the con- 
cept just now very much in vogue. It consists in 
claiming that conception is essentially divisive in its 
tendency. Thus Seth Pringle-Patterson says: 
' 'Conception deals wholly with abstracta, with iso- 
lated aspects or points of view. It can never, there- 
fore, express the facts of experience as they exist." 1 
Still more strenuously Bergson and his school em- 
phasize this isolating or divisive tendency. We are 
even told that concepts "make the whole notion of a 
causal influence between finite things incompre- 
hensible. No real activities and indeed no real con- 
nection of any kind can obtain, if we follow the con- 
ceptual logic." 2 That statement — fantastic upon 
its very face — evidently has its origin in the old 
view of the conceptual world as purely static, eter- 
nal, changeless. But that view I have made no 
longer tenable. The causal processes that concepts 
seek to express are, indeed, absolutely uniform and 
continuous ; but that does not by any means 1 necessi- 
tate the invariability of the results or effects. On 
the contrary, as I have shown, it is this very con- 
tinuity of the process which causes infinite variation 
in the results. For example, it is the continuous ac- 
tion of gravity which causes the velocity of the fall- 
ing stone to vary in each infinitesimal instant. Other 
processes may also modify or counteract the results 
of any given process. In fine, concepts mean 
uniform processes, but their uniformity by no 



^an's Place in the Cosmos, p. 147. 
2 James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 246. 



THE CONCEPT IO7 

means necessitates a static, changeless, paralyzed 
world. 

Another grave error in the statements is their ut- 
ter one-sidedness. It is true in a sense that concep- 
tion is divisive or isolating. Thought to be of any 
value must distinguish precisely. But Bergson and 
the others forget that right thinking distinguishes 
only in order that it may more truly unite. The 
Neo-Hegelians deserve credit for having insisted 
that every judgment is at once analysis and syn- 
thesis ; but their doctrine has a bizarre and paradoxi- 
cal aspect unless we can show how it is possible that 
the same act should at once divide and unite. That 
I have done. For I have proved, first, that every 
concept in its deepest, truest meaning signifies a 
causal process ; and second, that the peculiarity of a 
relation of cause and effect is, that it alone among 
all relations, at once distinguishes, and yet unites 
its terms by the firmest of bonds. 

It seems then a strange mistake to affirm that con- 
ceptual thinking merely excludes or isolates, that it 
renders connection impossible. One might as well 
say that the revolution of the earth on its axis ren- 
ders day and night impossible. 

Section 5. The Origin of Concepts 

We have now examined the three main theories 
of the concept and we have found them all ending 
in insufferable paradoxes or self-contradictions; we 
have further found that all these perplexities disap- 
pear before the light of the simple theory advocated 



108 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

in these pages. So far then as metaphysical or psy- 
chological evidence is concerned, our demonstration 
seems complete. But I shall not rest here with this 
abstract, metaphysical discussion. For this question 
concerning the essential meaning of the concept is 
of supreme importance. If the essence of all con- 
cepts can be proved to be an affirmation of a causal 
process, it would be enough by itself to demonstrate 
my fundamental thesis that all thinking is a relating 
of cause and effect ; for, no act of thinking is possi- 
ble save through the medium of concepts. And so to 
make assurance doubly sure, I add to the metaphysi- 
cal demonstration another drawn from history. I 
shall show that from the very first, the human mind 
has dimly realized that a concept was the symbol 
of a causal relation. And, furthermore, that to this 
consciousness the origin of both language and sci- 
ence is due. 

(A) First consider the origin of language. It is 
now a well-established principle in philology that 
the majority of verbal roots express acts, and 
mostly acts which in a primitive state of society men 
are called upon to perform — such as digging, plait- 
ing, weaving, striping, throwing, binding, etc. 
Furthermore, they are generally acts performed in 
common; for only thus would they become well 
known, and only thus could the merely accidental 
elements be eliminated. And most important of all, 
we are told by Miiller 1 that the mere consciousness 
of the acts of digging, binding, etc., is not enough ; 

x Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Thought, p. 30. 



THE CONCEPT IO9 

only when the processes are such that their results 
remain perceptible — for example, in the hole dug, 
in the tree struck down, in the reeds tied together 
as a mat — do men reach conceptual thoughts in 
language. 

Every verbal root in language, then, stands 
forth an enduring witness to the fact that concepts 
mean causal processes. Or as another eminent 
philologist, Noire, has said: "The conception of 
causality subsisting betzveen things. Verily this 
constitutes such a simple, plain, and at the same time 
obvious and convincing means of distinguishing the 
logos, human reason from animal intelligence, that 
it seems inconceivable that this manifest and clear 
boundary line should not long ago have been noted 
and established as such." 1 

From this unimpeachable proof presented by the 
origin of language we turn now to evidence of an- 
other kind, later, but equally conclusive. It is the 
testimony offered by man's prolonged effort to 
rightly classify natural things. Logicians still cling 
with a sad tenacity to the superstition that classify- 
ing consists in noting the mere resemblance of 
things. But I have shown that mere feelings are 
vague, misleading, self-contradictory and therefore 
of little scientific value. What then is the principle 
governing true classification? 

We find that at a quite early period men, even the 
half-civilized and the savage, had succeeded in clas- 
sifying living things, so far as they were known, 

iNoire, Origin of Language, p. 47. 



110 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

into their species or lowest kinds. The reason of 
this success is evident. They had constantly before 
their eyes the processes of production whence these 
relationships sprang ; therefore it was easy to deter- 
mine the species. 

But concerning inorganic things there was no 
such knowledge; then processes of production were 
hidden in a darkness which the most enlightened 
could not penetrate. Hence we find that every ef- 
fort to classify inorganic things ended in complete, 
ignominious failure. Even so great a genius as that 
of Aristotle could invent no better scheme for classi- 
fying the inorganic than these four kinds, "the hot 
and dry, the hot and wet, the cold and dry and the 
cold and wet." 

Note further that ancient classification, even of 
organic things, was confined to species. For thou- 
sands of years learned men — Theophrastus, for ex- 
ample, whom Aristotle selected to be his successor 
— had been studying botany; and yet until three 
centuries ago, they had not advanced beyond the 
crude division of the plant world into "trees, shrubs 
and herbs." But light dawned at last when Gessner 
discovered that true genera could be formed by not- 
ing characteristics drawn from the process of fructifi- 
cation. Since then, naturalists in their long search 
for a true or natural system of classification — as 
Darwin expressly affirms — "have always been un- 
consciously guided, not by mere resemblances, but 
by the principle of inheritance." 1 But the principle 

1 Origin of Species, Ch. 14. 



THE CONCEPT III 

of inheritance is but another phrase for process of 
production. What more perfect demonstration 
than this could be given of my doctrine that mere 
feelings of resemblance are of slight value until 
transformed into causal relations? In other words, 
a concept means something more than an imaginary 
collection of resembling things, or an impossible 
bundle of attributes or both of these together. In its 
deepest, most essential meaning it symbolizes the 
causal process which produces both the individuals 
and their attributes. 

And under the guidance of this same principle, 
Darwin himself was led to that sublime discovery 
which has revolutionized modern thought. 



Thus we have unravelled those two inter tangled 
perplexities that for thousands of years have made 
the concept a subject of constant dispute and uncer- 
tainty. The first perplexity was the double import 
of the concept. Some logicians, like Sigwart, Brad- 
ley, etc., have placed exclusive stress upon the ex- 
tension. Others like Mill insist that "the extension 
is not anything intrinsic to the concept. . . . But 
the comprehension is the concept itself." 1 Or as Sir 
Wm. Hamilton puts it : "A notion or concept is the 
fictitious whole or unity made up of a plurality of 
attributes." 2 Thus each party sees but one side of 
the shield. We have shown both sides, and what is 

Examination, Hamilton's Philosophy, I. p. 79. 
2 Lectures, II. p. 171. 



112 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

far more important, the bond of union between 
them. Both are simply results of the process of pro- 
duction which the concept represents. 

Second, that process of production is no mere fig- 
ment of the mind. It is a reality in part perceptible 
by the senses and always verifiable by inductive ob- 
servation. Furthermore, this view explains the sub- 
ordination of concepts as due to the inclusion of one 
causal process within another wider one. Thus we 
need not be puzzled, as Lotze was, by the fact that 
one object can be at once an animal, a vertebrate, a 
mammal and a cow. 



CHAPTER VIII 

JUDGMENT 

Section I. The Unity of Judgment and Inference 

One of the most eminent of living psychologists, 
in the closing pages of a recent work, makes the fol- 
lowing declaration : "I wish that I could offer some 
positive contribution to the psychology of judgment; 
but the insuperable difficulty there is that we do not 
yet know what judgment is. It is an anomalous 
position. We are committed to a psychology of 
judgment; we can no longer say with Rehmke that 
the phrase is contradictory in itself, or with Marbe 
that there is no psychological criterion of judgment; 
and yet no one, psychologist or logician, can furnish 
a definition that finds general acceptance." 1 And he 
adds that this is not a matter simply of different 
points of view; there is actual uncertainty regard- 
ing the nature and limits of the process to be de- 
fined. 

Another eminent psychologist lays stress upon 
the uncertainty in regard to the limits of judgment. 
He speaks of "the undue proportion of reasoning 
that recent logical theory has brought under the 
head of judgment, and the little that is left to the 
more practical operation of judgment. Superficially 
regarded this seems to indicate that the recent writ- 
ers have failed to find any sharp line of distinction 

iTitchener, Psychology of the Thought Process, 188. 



114 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

between what they call judgment and what they call 
inference." 1 

But here, too, my fundamental thesis will dispel 
the double darkness. It will enable us to precisely 
define the nature of judgment and to draw a sharp 
line of distinction between judgment and inference. 
To do this let me recall a view already suggested — 
namely, the superior freedom of thought or reason 
compared with Nature. The course of Nature is 
from cause to effect; its past is irrevocable. But 
thought or reason is endowed with the grand pre- 
rogative of moving at will in either direction. It 
can follow the course of nature by passing from 
cause to effect ; or it can reverse that movement and 
pass freely from observed effects to a knowledge of 
their causes. This reverse movement is, indeed, 
more difficult than the other; but it is by far the 
higher, nobler function — the method of all scientific 
advance, the secret of all human progress. 

Now the proposition I expect to prove is this: 
Judgment is the movement of thought from causes 
to their effects; inference is the reverse movement 
from effects to their causes. Thus we draw a sharp 
line of distinction beween judgment and inference; 
and yet reveal their underlying unity. 

The truth of this view, so far as judgment is con- 
cerned, is evident at a glance. Human knowledge 
begins with the recognition of things as causes. The 
most benighted savage can abstract; he can distin- 
guish between the thing perceived and the activities 

iPillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning, pp. 170- 171. 



JUDGMENT 115 

it puts forth or the changes it undergoes. Thus 
there develops some crude idea of substantial causes 
and of their qualities as dependent upon them. 

But there are objections that must be met. Let us 
turn, then, to Lotze's criticism of the judgment, he 
being the inventor of most of the puzzles and para- 
doxes rehearsed by Bradley and others. 

Lotze begins his criticism by referring to the so- 
called impersonal judgments, it rains, it lightens, 
etc. But really they form a signal proof of my 
thesis. That little word "it" is a most significant one. 
The essential function of thought, for the savage 
as for us, is to relate cause and effect. But primi- 
tive man did not know the cause of rain or lightning, 
and so he inserted the neutral word, it, as the sym- 
bol of an unknown cause. And we still retain the 
word, because we are almost as ignorant as the cave- 
man was. Who fully knows why rain-drops fall or 
what electricity means ? 

Lotze's main attack, however, is on the categorical 
judgment against which he makes three charges. 

(a) The first is that the relation between the real 
thing and its properties cannot be transferred to the 
relation of subjects to their predicates. "In regard to 
the latter relation we find no corresponding account 
of the way in which one inheres in the other." 1 How 
much of this metaphysical relation will survive, he 
asks, if the thing be replaced by something which is 
not a thing, and the property by something which is 
not a property? I answer that all this hinges upon 

1 Logic, § 53. 



1 16 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

the misleading and preposterous relation of inher- 
ence. But I have shown that the true relation of sub- 
stance and attribute is a causal one. And obviously 
that relation can be transferred to any subject and 
predicate, no matter whether the subject be a thing 
or not, so long as it is a cause or causal factor. 

(b) Lotze's second criticism of the categorical 
judgment is that it cannot be explained by saying 
that one term is predicated of the other. His argu- 
ment here is very misty and prolix, but the gist of it 
is given in the final sentence: "It still remains a 
further question: What constitutes this peculiar re- 
lation ?" I answer that it is the relation of the sub- 
ject as partial cause or factor in a process to the 
effect produced by that process. 

(c) Lotze's third and final objection is that such 
judgments are indefensible against the principle of 
identity. My answer can be given in his own words 
— not chance words dropped in a careless moment, 
but an ultimate principle set forth at the close of his 
Logic. He there maintains that equations — the only 
real identities 2 — "express the fact that certain opera- 
tions, different in form, applied in a prescribed order 
to any given quantities within defined limits will 
give identical results." That is quite true, but it 
ruins Lotze's third criticism of the judgment. For 
it affirms that equations, the class of judgments that 
are the most abstract, the farthest removed from 
any appearance of causal activity, are, after all, in 

mid., pp. 54, Si- 
2 Ibid., p. 486. 



JUDGMENT 117 

their essence, in the deepest core of their meaning, 
judgments of causality. For example, the judg- 
ment 7+5=12 means that the addition of 5 units 
to 7 units will result in 12 units. And as already 
said, that is no casual, unguarded admission, but 
Lotze's ultimate, reasoned account of equations. 

We have thus examined Lotze's keen indictment 
of the judging process. And we have found that 
when the judgment is viewed aright — namely, as 
thought's movement from cause to effect — all his 
charges fall to the ground. The puzzles, anomalies 
and discrepancies which he finds are due to his fail- 
ure to see the true, intrinsic nature of judgment. 

Section 2. Brentano and Watt 

Brentano was one of the first thinkers to em- 
phasize the view, now so widely accepted, that the 
judgment is a unitary process. The motive inspir- 
ing such a view is an admirable one ; it is that long- 
ing for unity of thought which has ever character- 
ized the scientific spirit. But very few, probably, 
would now insist that Brentano' s theory accom- 
plishes its purpose ; and from our present position we 
can readily see the cause of its failure. 

For the great peril attending all such endeavors 
is that they may mistake mere confusion for genuine 
unity. You cannot attain real unity of thought by 
simply flinging everything into one melting-pot. 
But Brentano, and many others after him, have tried 
to present the judgment as a unitary process by 
merely effacing that normal, elementary distinction 



Il8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

between the two terms — subject and predicate — 
which have always been recognized as forming the 
very essence of the judgment. In place of this 
familiar, clear distinction he would substitute the 
mystifying duality of perceptive act and content. 
The result is not real unity, but confusion and vague- 
ness. 

For example, he identifies judgment with belief. 
But as another has said: "Brentano positively de- 
clines to state in what the process of belief consists, 
or to give it any conditions. He argues strenuously 
that it is an unanalyzable process. We believe, and 
that is all that can be said. This can mean only that 
the process has not yet been analyzed, or that 
Brentano does not care to undertake the process." 1 

That certainly is an anomalous position. Judg- 
ment is belief ; and belief is an unanalyzable process ! 
According to Kant, the mind has no assured knowl- 
edge of the outer world ; according to Brentano, the 
mind has no knowledge of its own most elementary 
and constant operations; so simple an act as a judg- 
ment is an unanalyzable and therefore unintelligible 
process. Between the two, the mind seems reduced 
very near to a state of idiocy. 

But now look at the matter from my causal point 
of view. The predicate is related to the subject, not 
by some fantastic inherence therein, but by being 
an effect whereof the subject is the partial cause. 
There you have the judgment presented as a unitary 
process without any slurring or effacing of those 

1 Pillsbury, Psychology of Reasoning, p. 28. 



JUDGMENT 119 

indispensable distinctions that form the essence of a 
judgment. Nay, more than that, both the unity and 
the distinctions are emphasized to the utmost. 
Nothing so clearly distinguishes two terms as a re- 
lation of cause and effect; and nothing binds them 
together by firmer bonds. 

It may be objected that in Chapter IV. I accept 
Brentano's view of sensations as by themselves in- 
distinguishable from each other, and that here I am 
contraverting it. But that would not be true. Sen- 
sations are indistinguishable from each other only 
when isolated from the causal processes — or the ex- 
ternal and internal factors thereof — producing them. 
So my two references to Brentano's view cor- 
roborate, instead of contradicting, each other. 



But let us turn now to a recent discovery that is 
being welcomed as opening a new epoch in experi- 
mental psychology — Watt's disclosure of the Auf- 
gabe, the task or problem as the one sole psychologi- 
cal criterion of thought. That chimes perfectly with 
the doctrine I am here advocating. True, Watt finds 
many such tasks, instead of the one ultimate, all-em- 
bracing task of relating cause and effect. But Titch- 
ener explains that: "We may say in general that 
many of the problems which give direction to hu- 
man activity have this character of the obvious and 
in so far of the unconscious, and that philosophical 
reflection and self-examination are needed to raise 
them into the clear light of consciousness. . . . 



120 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Just because this predisposition is altogether ac- 
customed and obvious, it will not of itself and un- 
aided come to consciousness as what it is. . . . 
This relief of consciousness, this gradual mechaniz- 
ing by practice of processes that at first demanded 
effort of attention and consideration from various 
points of view, is one of the most firmly established 
results of psychology." 

I am demonstrating in this volume that the ele- 
mental, all-inclusive task or function of thought is to 
differentiate the existent into cause and effect. But 
as said in the above quotation, a task or function 
thus universal and familiar tends to fall into the 
background of the mechanical, the instinctive and 
unconscious. Its place in consciousness is taken by 
a crowd of minor, special problems which, being un- 
familiar and therefore difficult, demand all our ef- 
forts of attention and absorb all our mental energies. 
Philosophic reflection ought to recall to conscious- 
ness what has been thus obscured. But modern phi- 
losophy not merely ignores, but denies the very ex- 
istence of that causation which it is the supreme task 
or function of thought to reveal. 

Section J. Meaning 

There is a theory of judgment much favored by 
modern logicians which describes it as the ascription 
of meaning to the given. But of this I shall say but 
little. For it is nothing but the fallacy of resem- 
blance come to the front again under a new name. 
The universal is conceived as a type or standard rep- 



JUDGMENT 121 

resenting a great mass of particulars ; in fine, it is a 
vague resemblance, at once like and not like its par- 
ticulars. As one writer says : "When we think, the 
type or standard is in consciousness, and nothing 
else. In perception as well, we are conscious of 
nothing but the type, of nothing but the meaning." 

Now undoubtedly there is in mental life such a 
process as that of noting mere resemblances or types. 
It is but a reflex activity, an automatic response to 
stimuli, shared by all animals down — so far as I 
know — even to the Amceba. But this brute asso- 
ciation of similarities is not thought. It differs from 
thought as night from day. 

For first, when you attempt to express your 
"types" in definite terms, you reach nothing but a 
self-contradiction — like and not-like — and that is the 
paralysis, the destruction of thought. 

Second. This association of types may suffice for 
merely animal needs; but it gives no capacity for 
continuous advance in knowledge, the crowning 
glory of thought. 

Third. Even the advocates of the type-theory 
admit that it does not satisfactorily explain large 
groups of judgments. True, the writer just quoted 
would account for this failure as due to defects in 
human speech, rather than in his theory: "The du- 
plicity in this whole group of judgments is linguistic 
only; the mental operation is single." But it seems 
incredible that all languages, high and low, should 
have thus conspired to say exactly the opposite of 
what they ought to say. It looks as if psychological 



122 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

introspection rather than universal language must 
have gone astray. 

Fourth, the lack of any real proof of this doctrine 
is shown by the revival, in its behalf, of the very 
old and foolish quibble about the copula. Bradley 
makes that quibble the corner-stone of his entire phi- 
losophy. Even the staid Sigwart asks forlornly : 
"But how does it happen that the verb to be, which 
is the expression of actual existence, assumes a for- 
mal function in the copula, whereby it loses its 
meaning — nay even seems to contradict it?" 1 

I answer that in the copula, being or existence 
neither loses nor contradicts, but rather reveals its 
true and deepest meaning. For, to be or to exist 
means to be in causal connection with other existents. 
And that is precisely its meaning in the copula; it 
asserts a causal connection between the subject and 
the predicate. 

The copula is thus wondrously well adapted to ex- 
press the exact relation of the two terms of a judg- 
ment. For, remember, the subject is not the cause 
of its predicate, but simply a factor in the causal 
process producing the attribute. "The house is red" 
does not mean that the house was the sole cause of 
its redness, but the painter, the owner, the paints 
were likewise factors in the process. Thus always 
the copula expresses a causal connection, no more, 
no less. In fine, the creators of language seem to 
have had far more prescience than the creators of 
"modern" logic. 
x Logic, II. p. ioo. 



JUDGMENT 123 

Section 4. Judgments of Relation 

There is a class of judgments that demand special 
attention because they are at once very obscure and 
very important — judgments of relation or compari- 
son. Lotze's treatment of them best exemplifies their 
obscurity, and so from it we will start. What looms 
up most in his view is the perplexity involved in the 
idea of "betzveen." He asks, "What are we to make 
of this idea of a self-existent distinction between 
a and b? And what objective relation can corre- 
spond to this "between," to which we only attach 
a meaning so long as it suggests to us the distance 
in space which we, in comparing a with b, interpo- 
lated by way of metaphor for the purpose of holding 
the two apart, and' at the same time as a connecting 
path on which our mind might be able to travel from 
one to the other?" 1 

Is not the above quotation a signal proof of my 
fundamental thesis? I have said that since the sole 
essential function of thought is to relate cause and 
effort, therefore whoever discards this only genuine 
mode of thinking has but one possible resort : he is 
inevitably driven, despite himself, to a sort of quasi- 
thinking by means of metaphor or hypostasis. Is 
not that precisely what Lotze does in the present 
case? He is trying, as the context shows, to inter- 
pret the difference between the idea of red and that 
of yellow. And his only resort is to imagine these 
two ideas set out in space with a third thing, the 
idea of difference put between them to keep them 
1 Lotze, Logic, § 338. 



124 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

apart. Could anything be more preposterous ? But 
turn now to the only genuine way of thinking — by 
causal interpretation. You then recognize red and 
yellow, not as two objects set apart like two stumps 
with another object — their difference — squatted "be- 
tween" them; but as two cognate products of one 
uniform optical process, with a certain definite differ- 
ence due to varying degrees of refrangibility. Your 
metaphor, your puzzle and paradox have all de- 
parted. 

Yet Lotze insists that what cannot be a relation 
between 1 things "cannot be a relation in the ordinary 
sense of the term at all." And Bradley elaborates 
this hint into his celebrated philosophy of the Abso- 
lute. Another eminent thinker bases his religion 
upon the same silly metaphor. He says: "It is all 
in the 'between' ; betweenness in its very nature 
cannot exist in any point of space. . . . Apart from 
mind there can be no relatedness, apart from rela- 
tions no space, apart from space no matter. It fol- 
lows that apart from mind there can be no matter." 2 
That is his proof of God's existence. 

And this metaphorical or hypostasizing malady 
seems equally epidemic in recent realism. In Rus- 
sell's philosophy, for instance, mere adjectives, 
qualities, colors, kinds — even "difference" itself — are 
hypostasised into eternal, immutable entities. 3 
"Change in the metaphysical sense" is rejected.* 

mid., p. 338. 

2 Rashdall, Philosophy and Religion, II. 
3 Principles of Mathematics, p. 471. 
mid., p. 486. 



JUDGMENT 125 

Russell, like Hegel, repudiates induction as "mere 
guesswork." 1 Causalty also he discards; "on the 
whole it is not worth while preserving the word 
cause." 2 And as an inevitable sequel the judgment 
loses all real validity. "The whole doctrine of sub- 
ject and predicate is radically false and must be 
abandoned." 3 

To show the main source of error in this kind of 
realism let us turn to the puzzle which Leibniz found 
in the judgment, "L is greater than M" ; and over 
which Russell labors long and in vain. Now that 
is plainly a judgment about the magnitude of L. 4 
But this magnitude is a property of L, an effect 
produced by a causal process wherein L is the chief 
visible factor. And the change to the comparative 
degree, "greater than M" changes the judgment 
nowise except to make it more exact. Therefore the 
comparative judgment, so puzzling to Leibniz and 
Russell, is simply a more exact expression of the 
causal relation expressed in the simpler judgment, 
"L has magnitude." 

Evidently here and throughout Russell's philos- 
ophy the fatal flaw is his conviction that "it is not 
worth while preserving the word cause." 



Thus the problem set before us by the two eminent 
psychologists quoted at the beginning of the chapter 
— namely, to dispel the uncertainty enveloping both 

1 Ibid., p. 11. 

mid., P . 486. 

3 Ibid., p 466 Cf. Hegel's Logic, §§ 31, 172. 
*Ibid., p. 222. 



126 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

the nature and the limits of judgment — seems to be 
solved. First, the nature of the judgment consists 
in affirming a causal relation; we have scrutinized 
the leading theories of judgment and found them 
honeycombed with defects and contradictions due to 
ignoring this essential nature of judgment. Second, 
the limit of judgment as distinguished from infer- 
ence is that the former is thought's movement from 
the substantial cause to its effects or attributes ; the 
latter is thought's movement from observed effects 
to their causes. But the full proof of this distinction 
between judgment and inference must be reserved 
for the next chapter. 



CHAPTER IX 

INDUCTION 

Section I. The Great Enigma 

Among all the scandals clouding modern phi- 
losophy, none seems quite so disgraceful as its failure 
to give a clear and consistent theory of the inductive 
method. For more than three centuries now the use 
of that method has been achieving marvels that have 
revolutionized the life of mankind ; and yet the exact 
nature of that method remains almost as much a 
secret for modern philosophy as it was for Aristotle. 
Furthermore, this inductive problem is not only in 
itself one of such supreme importance, but it is also 
one upon which all philosophic development hinges. 
This latter fact is signally proved by the Kantian 
system, of which all succeeding systems seem little 
more than cheaper editions. For Ueberweg is cer- 
tainly right when he speaks of Kant as "assuming 
(what he does not prove, but simply posits as self- 
evident, although his whole system depends upon it) 
that necessity and strict universality are derivable 
from no combination of experiences, but only inde- 
pendently of all experiences." 1 According to Kant, 
"Experience tells us, indeed, what is, but not that 
it must necessarily be so and not otherwise; hence 
she gives us no true universality." 

Kant, then, was fully alive to the immense sig- 



1 History of Philosophy, II. p. 161. 



128 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

nificance of the problem, although he gave to it a 
wrong solution. Hegel, on the other hand, with 
characteristic audacity, simply ignores it. Unable 
to explain induction in his Logic, he shoves it 
aside with a few contemptuous lines. It is nothing 
more than a mere enumeration of similar instances. 1 
"In no induction can we ever exhaust the individuals. 
. . . Every induction is consequently imperfect. 
... By this defect of induction we are led on to 
analogy/' 2 And this analogy, of which induction 
is but a defective form, is a mere instinct, an arguing 
from faith ! And the whole nineteenth century, re- 
splendent with the victories of inductive science, 
has taught nothing beyond that to Hegelians. Bo- 
sanquet, for example, affirms that "scientific induc- 
tion is, indeed, something of a contradiction in 
terms. 3 . . . It is not an inference, but a transient 
and external characteristic of inference." 4 No won- 
der that so zealous a devotee of Hegelism as Joachim 
exclaims mournfully : "The coherence notion of truth 
may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very 
entrance of the harbor/' 5 

Nor does modern realism seem anywise more com- 
petent than its rival to reach a rational interpreta- 
tion of the inductive method. Mill, indeed, should 
be highly honored for the courage and skill with 
which he attacked this deep and difficult problem; 
nevertheless he did not solve it. In fact, Mill's ex- 

1 Hegel, Logic, p. 427, note. 

2 Ibid., p. 190, note. 

3 Bosanquet, Logic, II. p. 118. 

*Ibid. II., p. 176. 

'Joachim, Nature of Truth, p. 170. 



INDUCTION 129 

position of the inductive method is in many respects 
very deceptive. Out of these many respects I can 
here summarize only the two leading, most compre- 
hensive ones. First, Mill is as much entangled as 
Hegel in the Fallacy of Resemblance. Their phrase- 
ology is different, but both fall into the same abyss 
of error. Hegel is absorbed in "identity and differ- 
ence"; for Mill "the universal type of the reasoning 
process" is : "Certain individuals have a given attri- 
bute, an individual or individuals resemble the for- 
mer in certain other attributes; therefore they re- 
semble them also in the given attribute." 1 Both fail 
to see that mere feelings of resemblance, of likeness 
and unlikeness, instead of being the universal type 
of the reasoning process, are but irrational, pre- 
logical modes of the psychical, which of themselves 
lead nowhere but to incoherence, self-contradiction 
and the consequent extinction of thought. Secondly, 
Mill, like Hegel, degrades induction ultimately into 
a mere enumeration of particulars. He expressly 
affirms that the principle of nature's uniformity 
"must be considered as our warrant for all the others 
in this sense, that if it were not true, all other in- 
ductions would be fallacious." 2 All induction, then, 
is ultimately reducible to an illicit process ; all reason- 
ing is fundamentally irrational. The sophistries by 
which Mill tries to evade this conclusion have been 
too often exposed by others to need a tedious recital 
here. 



"Logic, Bk. II. ch. 3, § 7- 
'Ibid., Bk. III. ch. 3, § 1. 



130 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

But no other logician has ever been able to ex- 
tricate himself from these two errors any more than 
Hegel or Mill were. True, some of them have 
striven hard to escape from the second error — in- 
duction viewed as an illicit and palpably impossible 
process. But they have not succeeded. The most 
plausible attempt was that of Jevons, by describing 
induction as but reversed deduction, or as Sigwart 
prefers to phrase it, reduction. But that is circular 
reasoning in its most obvious form. Deduction is 
reasoning from universal affirmations; but how do 
you justify these universals from which you proceed 
to reason? The answer is, by reverse deduction. 
You are bound upon the revolving wheel of error, 
and you will not escape by merely reversing the 
revolutions. 

Of the first-named error, the fallacy of resem- 
blance, there has not been not even recognition, much 
less any serious attempt to escape therefrom. With 
surprising uniformity all logicians degrade induction 
into a mere bundling together of similarities. Even 
Jevons, Mill's chief antagonist, agrees with him that 
"the fundamental process of reasoning consists in 
inferring of anything what we know of similar ob- 
jects." 1 But James outstrips all rivals in his zeal 
for similarity; in his opinion the most elementary 
single difference between the human mind and that 
of brutes lies in the deficiency on the brute's part 
to associate ideas by similarity. The mere feeling 
of likeness, he thinks, is the crowning trait of human 



^obhouse, Theory of Knowledge, p. 285. 



INDUCTION 131 

genius at its loftiest; even Newton's immortal dis- 
covery was due to a sudden outburst, "a flash of 
similarity" between an apple and the moon. 1 But I 
doggedly insist upon the familiar fact that brutes 
have a surer scent for similarity than man has ; and 
that, according to James' theory of reasoning, the 
brutes and not a Newton ought to have produced the 
Principia. 

The theory of induction, then, seems enigmatic 
enough ; reasoning appears somehow to present itself 
from start to finish as inexplicably unreasonable. 
And from the historical point of view still another 
enigma emerges to deepen the mystery. The scien- 
tific discoveries made in ancient times were due 
mainly to the Hindus and the Alexandrian Greeks f 
they were few in number and comparatively trivial. 
Why, then, after so many thousand years of stag- 
nation and sterility, did this strange inductive 
method — this highest type of the reasoning process 
— suddenly in the last two or three centuries bloom 
forth into all the splendors of modern science ? That 
problem certainly has never been solved. It has 
hardly been seriously propounded. 

Both from the theoretic and the historic point of 
view we are justified in entitling induction the great 
enigma. And no better test of a genuine philosophy 
can be conceived than its ability to solve a problem 
so important and one that has heretofore defied all 
attempts at its solution. 



1 James, Psychology, II. p. 360. 

*Cf. my Philosophy of History, pp. 60-65, 126-134, 189-197. 



132 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

Section 2, Deduction 

My solution of this long unsolved and yet su- 
premely important problem is briefly as follows : All 
reasoning or inference is primarily induction. De- 
duction is but a branch of the inductive method, a 
subsidiary phase thereof, applicable to special sub- 
jects. No other view except this can safeguard the 
unity of all reasoning and ultimately of all thought. 

To clear my view from all appearances of paradox 
let us consider first the mathematical sciences, since 
they have always been accounted pre-eminently de- 
ductive. Beginning with arithmetic, we find it every- 
where based upon the mental creation of unchanging 
units. In counting, however much the objects 
counted may vary, the units substituted for them by 
thought remain absolutely invariable and equivalent 
to each other. The arithmetician mentally excludes 
all differentiating or modifying agencies as rigidly 
as the physicist physically excludes them from his 
experiments. Mark further that this is not merely 
a basal principle underlying arithmetic; more than 
that, it is a method that must be used at every single 
step of an arithmetical process. Every such minute 
step is an induction, a discerning of the universal 
in the particular. Savages do not clearly distinguish 
between numbers and things numbered, nor even did 
the Greeks, apparently. 

This essentially inductive character is also evinced 
in geometry. A geometric demonstration is the link- 
ing together of many inferences, each so simple that 
we recognize its universal validity at a glance. Mod- 



INDUCTION 133 

ifying agencies are excluded by the homogeneity of 
space. When, for instance, a straight line is drawn 
to a point upon another line, you see that the angles 
thus formed will be equal to two right angles, not 
only in this particular case, but universally, because 
in pure space there is nothing which could cause 
a difference. In fine, it is this swift, almost un- 
conscious but never failing transition from the par- 
ticular to the universal, at each successive step in 
the reasoning that forms the essence, the very soul 
and life of a geometric demonstration. The rest is 
a mere task of construction, an ingenious fitting 
together of many inductions, until you attain the 
desired result. But without this incessant transfor- 
mation of each particular inference into a universal 
one, as you proceed, your proof would be valid only 
for the one little figure given in the diagram. 

It would seem, then, that what is usually called 
mathematical deduction is, in its most characteristic 
and fundamental features, really induction. Espe- 
cially the final theorems in geometry, dependent as 
they are for their proof upon the preceding ones, are 
made up of hundreds of minute inductions as a living 
body is made up of living cells. 

Furthermore, those deductions which are not 
mathematical or quantitative, but simply syllogistic, 
are still more obviously of an essentially inductive 
character. A syllogism is the union of two premises, 
both of which are of inductive origin. All the 
really difficult and valuable work of reasoning lies 
in the formation and verifying of those premises; 
the putting of them together in the form of a syllo- 



134 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

gism was almost as much a mechanical task as the 
nailing together of two boards. Indeed, syllogistic 
machines have been invented which seem to perform 
this task quite as well as the average man. 

Nevertheless, this theory of reasoning, so obvious 
and irrefragable, so accordant with the whole history 
and spirit of science, is exactly opposite to that of 
most modern logicians. They still worship at the 
shrine of syllogism. They agree with Hegel, appa- 
rently, that everything, the whole universe and its 
contents, "is a syllogism.'' Bosanquet shoves induc- 
tion aside as a transient and external characteristic 
of inference. The name Scientific Induction, he 
declares, "is something of a contradiction in terms." 
Lotze likewise is "certain that inductive methods 
rest entirely upon the results of the deductive logic." 1 
For Sigwart and Jevons induction is but deduction 
inverted, turned upside down. Even Mill, generally 
regarded as the creator of inductive logic, in the 
long run reduces induction — as we shall soon see — 
to a feeble and forlorn auxiliary to deduction. 

But I am not at all dismayed by this array against 
me. For I know its origin and its futility. It orig- 
inates in that passion for innate ideas and a-priorities 
which has so long cursed modern philosophy. Theo- 
rists, unable to understand induction, have in sheer 
despair invented a crowd of innate ideas, postulates, 
a-priorities, etc., to furnish a basis and starting-point 
for knowledge. All these arbitrary, unverifiable and 
futile assumptions I sweep aside contemptuously. If 



x Lotze, Logic, § 288. 



INDUCTION 135 

philosophy can find no better basis than that, it is 
bound to end in dull, stupid skepticism. 

Section 5. The True Theory of Induction 

Induction, as we have seen, is the mind's passage 
from observed results to the causal processes pro- 
ducing them. In the pre-scientific age of thought 
what was called induction was merely the observa- 
tion of particulars, their resemblances and sequences ; 
like things it was assumed must produce like effects ; 
an event that often preceded another event must be 
its cause. But any such mere enumeration of par- 
ticulars can never give a genuine induction, a legiti- 
mate ascent from particulars to universals. It may 
answer some of the practical purposes of life, but is 
loaded down with liabilities to error. In fine, it is 
not induction at all, but simply judgment. And I 
may add that this explains why so great a genius 
as Aristotle should have given such a sorry account 
of induction ; he lived in the pre-scientific age. 

For modern science has added to the mere obser- 
vation or enumeration of particulars another, a 
higher and supreme method, that of experiment. 
And by that sign she has conquered. Of course, 
man has always been, in some crude, bungling 
fashion, more or less of an experimenter. But 
science alone has given to experiment its supremacy, 
systematized it, invented for its use a wonderful 
array of instruments. 

But modern logicians have been strangely blind to 
the depth and width of meaning enfolded in that 



I36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

familiar word, experiment. Above all, they have not 
seen that scientific experiment is of two kinds, two 
hemispheres of one globe. The one kind is physical 
experiment, whereby some supposed factor in a 
causal process is actually isolated from modifying 
agencies. In the other kind, the experimentation is 
abstract or mathematical; the supposed factor or 
force is mentally isolated, reduced to so simple a form 
that its results can be calculated and compared with 
the actually observed results. This distinction be- 
tween two kinds of experiment I expect to show is 
the key to that problem of the inductive method 
which modern logic heretofore has so dismally failed 
to solve. 

My theory, then, briefly outlined is this : Induction 
is the discovery of causal processes by means of the 
two methods just described, physical and mental ex- 
periment. 

Furthermore, in proving my thesis I shall not fol- 
low the usual course of logicians who in treating of 
induction arbitrarily select out of the immense mass 
of scientific discoveries and experiments a few special 
instances that happen to suit their theories. That is 
sophistry naked and unashamed. On the contrary, 
my proof will be drawn not from selected fragments, 
but from the whole — the entire course of scientific 
development. The sciences will be taken up one by 
one, and of each it will be shown that its long delay 
and its final success in becoming a true science — a 
verified body of knowledge — can be explained only 
by the principle here enunciated. 



INDUCTION 137 

(a) Concerning the abstract or mathematical 
sciences the proof has already been given in the pre- 
ceding section. A necklace of pearls is something 
different from the individual pearls of which it is 
composed; nevertheless the individual pearls do not 
change their nature by being thus strung together. 
In that sense, and in that alone, we may speak of a 
geometric demonstration as being a deduction ; that 
is, a composite of many minute inductions skillfully 
strung together. Each of these simple inductions 
is an experiment; that is, a mental exclusion of all 
influences that might modify the result. Each 
thereby translates the particular seen in the diagram 
into a universal. But it is unnecessary to repeat 
what was said only three or four pages before this 
one. 

The abstract sciences, then, are manifestly experi- 
mental and inductive — at least for any one with 
brains enough to comprehend the essential unity of 
physical and mental experiment. 

(b) We come then to mechanics, the first of the 
concrete sciences. Let me begin by quoting what 
Lotze has well said : "The entire period of antiquity 
passed away without the conception of motion — the 
central point in mechanics — having been educed in a 
simple form enough to be immediately apprehended 
by the mind in its abstract character. . . . The mind 
of antiquity never succeeded in separating the simple 
process in which all motion consists — continuous 
change of place — from the conflicting peculiarities 
of those different classes of instances in which it 



I38 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

occurs." 1 All that is manifestly true; and it vaguely 
anticipates my doctrine that mechanics began to be 
a true science only by means of a long, difficult course 
of mental experiment, which gradually excluded all: 
that was adventitious and irrelevant in the ancient 
view of motion, and thus set forth that concept 
in its purest, simplest form. For example, even so 
imperial a genius as that of Kepler wasted twenty 
years of severe but unavailing toil, mainly because 
he clung to the old Greek error that the only perfect 
motion was circular motion. When it finally dawned 
upon him that both elliptic and circular motions were 
but variously modified forms of one simple motion 
or continuous change of place his problem was vir- 
tually solved. 

Again, Galileo's discovery of the first law of 
motion is a double proof of my contention. For, 
first, he arrives at his law by observing that changes 
in the velocity of a moving body are due to some 
external agency counteracting or modifying it ; hence 
he concludes that such agencies being excluded, the 
motion would persist uniformly forever. Second, 
it is a most significant although little known fact 
that Galileo's insight into this law was a very de- 
fective one. 2 He imagines that motion in a circle, 
if freed from all foreign influences, would be as 
eternally persistent as motion in a straight line ! So 
slow, gradual, difficult is this process of mental ex- 
periment that even the sublimest of discoverers rarely 



'Logic, § 360. 

2 H6ffding, Hist. Mod. Philosophy, I. p. 180. 



INDUCTION 139 

grasps the full import of his discoveries ; his results 
have to be rectified by others. 

(c) Turning now to astronomy, we find there the 
crowning proof of the principle that induction is the 
discovery of a causal process by means either of 
physical or mental experiment. The first named 
means there was not the faintest possibility of using. 
For gravitation is not only the most universal and 
wonderful but also the most deeply hidden of all 
natural processes. No sense gave a hint of it; no 
dreamer had so much as imagined it ; nothing was 
perceptible but its results. But one day, according 
to tradition, the supposition flashed into Newton's 
mind that the same process which caused an apple 
to fall to the ground might also produce the celestial 
motions; and after laboring for years with the 
most consummate skill, he finally demonstrated the 
fact. And since then his conclusion has been cor- 
roborated in a myriad of ways, and never once con- 
tradicted. 

But this, you object, was nothing but deduction 
inverted; Newton's reasoning started from a pre- 
supposition. I answer that no physical experiment 
was ever rationally made that did not start from 
some supposition that was to be tested. But you 
further insist that the proof is deduced from the 
hypothesis or supposition. I answer that on the con- 
trary the proof consists in the exact correspondence 
of the calculated results with the actually observed 
results. Or, third, you say that the conclusion is 
merely probable. I answer that modern calculus has 



I40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

attained such exactitude that the slightest error 
would show a discrepancy between calculated and 
observed results. The chance of error, then, is to 
the chance of truth as one to millions or billions. 
With that degree of certainty any sane mortal ought 
to be content. Fourth and finally, I fall back upon 
what I have proved and what common sense has 
always believed, namely, that induction precedes de- 
duction. To call it, then, inverse deduction is like 
saying that the pyramids were first built upon their 
apices and then inverted. 

(d) The creation of optical science is another 
proof. Here the paramount factor, refraction, had 
long been known in a vague, general way. But it 
was known only as a curiosity, an illusion, a strange 
freak of nature whereby the straight was made to 
appear bent. As far back as the Alexandrian age 
some languid efforts had been made to find law and 
order in these very refractory phenomena, but with- 
out avail. Fifteen centuries later even the genius of 
Kepler was baffled in the same attempt. But at last, 
in 1622, Snell discovered the law of refraction; the 
ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and of 
refraction are constant for the same medium. And 
that discovery gave birth to the science of optics. 
From Snell's formula Descartes explained, in part 
at least, the splendid mystery of the rainbow. Then 
came Newton with his explanation of colors as due 
to different degrees of refrangibility. Since then 
new optical secrets have come flowing forth like 
water from an unsealed fountain. 



INDUCTION 141 

Here again we have a crucial test of my conten- 
tion. Induction is the discovery of the essential 
factors in a causal process. In the present case the 
chief factor had been known for untold centuries, 
but known only as an illusion, a freak of nature, a 
plaything of idle curiosity. But as soon as this 
factor becomes really known, so precisely that its 
changing phases can be calculated and compared 
with one another, then a new science springs into 
being. 

Mark, too, the primacy here of mental experiment. 
Without that all the countless physical experiments 
since made would have been impossible. 

(e) The science of acoustics had a similar origin. 
Aristotle and the Greeks in general recognized 
vaguely that sound was not a substance traveling here 
and there, but was somehow the resultant of the air's 
motions. And Vitruvius even likened these motions 
to the waves caused by dropping a stone into still 
water. Here, too, as in optics, there was a dim 
glimpse of the truth, a crude view of sound as an un- 
dulatory process. But it was sterile — a mere conjec- 
ture, indefinite and therefore unverifiable. And thus 
it remained for near twenty centuries until Newton 
began his researches. With consummate skill he 
analyzed this undulatory process into its factors, 
and thus was enabled to calculate what apparently 
ought to have been the velocity of sound. But there 
was a fatal flaw in his induction; the calculation 
was 174 feet per second, less than the observed re- 
sult. And thus acoustics still lingered on an unveri- 



142 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

fied conjecture for more than a century. 1 But at last 
La Place showed that there was in this undulatory 
process a neglected factor. By the sudden com- 
pression of the air, heat was generated, and thus 
the wave-motion greatly accelerated. Due allow- 
ance being made for this, the calculated and observed 
velocities exactly corresponded, and acoustics became 
an inductive science. 

(/) We have seen that the creation of the two 
sciences last considered was long delayed, the one 
by an inexact, unverifiable conception of the under- 
lying causal process, the other by neglect of an impor- 
tant factor in the causal process. Chemistry, although 
studied far more zealously, was delayed equally long 
by a combination of these two causes. In the first 
place, the neglected factor was, strangely enough, 
the most potent and widely diffused of all agents in 
chemical processes, to wit, the atmosphere. Even 
in the Middle Ages many skillful experiments came 
to naught and many brilliant discoveries were nipped 
in the bud by the failure to take account of the 
atmosphere or its chief constituent. Even in modern 
times, after oxygen had been actually discovered, very 
little attention was paid to it for more than a cen- 
tury ; the absurd fiction of phlogiston, with its "neg- 
ative weight," had taken its place. Secondly, the 
doctrine of affinity was announced far back in the 
Middle Ages by Albertus Magnus; but it never 
gained precise, quantitative expression until barely 
a century ago, through the labors of Dalton. Then, 

"Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, II. pp. 34-36. 



INDUCTION 143 

both obstacles being removed, chemistry became a 
true science. And ever since it has been the wonder- 
ful key unlocking untold treasures for mankind. 

(g) In the science of biology precisely the same 
law of evolution has been evinced as in the inorganic 
sciences. More than 230 years ago Leuwenhock 
with his simple magnifying glasses made animalculse 
visible. Thus the very units of life were laid bare 
to human inspection. They were not, as mathe- 
matical units are, mere abstractions which the mind 
has to laboriously create for itself by reflective im- 
agination. Nature and human genius had combined 
to place them directly before the eyes of all those who 
wished to study and understand the mystery of life. 
And yet for almost two centuries but slight atten- 
tion was given to this new revelation, and little 
issued from it but some semi-poetic dreams. But a 
few years ago Pasteur, by patient study of these 
living units, established the vital theory of fermen- 
tation. And from that sprang immediately the germ 
theory of disease, which has transformed medicine 
from an empirical art into a true inductive science. 
And biology itself has entered upon a new stage of 
existence. One of the most eminent of biologists 
tells us that the real development of his science has 
hinged mainly upon this visible disclosure of the 
physiological process reduced to its simplest units. 
Only as inquiry, he says, has turned from the highest 
organisms to study in the lowest the process of life 
in the concrete, has biology in theory and practice 
made much progress. 



144 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

In the above statement we have clearly set before 
us the two phases of induction. In the inorganic 
sciences we are dealing with hidden processes whose 
existence, therefore, can be verified only by the exact 
correspondence of calculated with observed results. 
Biology, on the other hand, deals with processes that 
are partially perceptible and which in the unicellular 
organisms are presented in their simplest forms — 
true units of life verifiable by the senses. The two 
methods, however, differ only superficially, not fun- 
damentally. The only difference between them is 
the merely formal one between mental and physical 
experiment. 

Such, then, is my theory of induction — the analy- 
sis of a causal process into factors verifiable by either 
physical or mental experiment. And as was prom- 
ised, the theory has been proved, not by the arbitrary 
selection of a few favorable instances, but by a sur- 
vey of the whole course of scientific development, 
showing that the long delay and final success in the 
establishment of each science can be accounted for 
only by the principle here enunciated. 

Section 4. Other Theories 

Not for the sake of further proof — for there is no 
need of it — but for clearer elucidation, let us con- 
sider some other theories now widely accepted. 

Take first the Hegelian theory, which claims to 
explain the evolution of science by simply asserting 
that the universe is an organic whole ; that is, either 
a plant or an animal. Its war cry is that "the whole 



INDUCTION 145 

is the truth"; the parts are self-contradictory and 
false. Now even if these astounding statements were 
demonstrably true, instead of being sheer assump- 
tions for which no particle of proof is proffered, 
still they would be wholly irrelevant to the question 
of human knowledge. For knowledge of the whole 
is plainly something far beyond the capacity of the 
finite human mind. Even the simplest, the most 
familiar of nature's processes, man knows only in 
part; every one of them contains inscrutable ele- 
ments which defy finite comprehension. Therefore, 
if the whole only is the truth, all human knowledge 
is but an idle dream. 

It may be urged, however, that Hegel's view is 
now simmered down by his disciples to the saner 
proposition that we must "assume as a basis of the 
whole inductive process some postulate which has 
real universal significance . . . that is understood 
even if it is not expressed, such as the uniformity of 
nature." 1 But in Chapter II. I have shown that 
both uniformity and variability are given together in 
nature ; and that science has reconciled their seeming 
conflict by interpreting the one as cause, the other as 
effect. Gravitation, for example, is a rigidly uniform 
process ; but every motion resulting therefrom varies 
constantly both in velocity and direction. Nature's 
uniformity, then, is simply one aspect of the causal 
principle ; and that principle is no assumption, noth- 
ing a-priori, but the first, the widest, the source of 
all other inductions. 



^ibben, Logic Deductive and Inductive, p. 173. 



I46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

In speaking of Mill's theory of induction, I shall 
pass over certain evident defects of which the 
reader can find mention in almost any recent treatise 
upon logic — such as the attempt to prove nature's 
uniformity by a mere enumeration of instances or 
the demand in the Second Canon that "every circum- 
stance save one" shall be in common. I shall confine 
myself to pointing out the one really fatal flaw in 
his theory, the one that gives rise to the other defects, 
and yet the one which seems to have been overlooked 
by his critics. That flaw is that he does not regard 
the highest stages of the inductive method as real 
induction at all. He avers explicitly that the two 
methods of observation and experiment described in 
his five Canons "for the study of phenomena result- 
ing from the composition of many causes, being from 
the very nature of the case inefficient and illusory, 
there remains only the third, that which- considers 
the causes separately and computes the effect from 
the balance of the different tendencies which produce 
it; in short, the deductive or a-priori'method." 1 But 
modern science has made it manifest that every 
effect, motion or change perceptible on this planet 
is of complex origin, the resultant irom a compo- 
sition of — not, indeed, causes, but of factors in a 
causal process. Therefore, according to Mill's own 
statement just quoted, all his famous Canons are 
inefficient and illusory. In other words, induction 
is an illicit method, an irrational leap from "some" 
to "all" ; deduction alone is of any real, logical value. 



'Logic, Book III. ch. 10, § 8. 



INDUCTION 147 

Thus Mill virtually concedes everything that 
Jevons, Sigwart, etc., have urged against his doc- 
trine ; their view really differs from his only in being 
somewhat less inconsistent. Further, their view 
differs from the Neo-Hegelian one only in that it 
does not speak of induction quite so contemptuously 
as do Bosanquet and Bradley. That all three views 
so closely concur shows the instinctive antipathy of 
all illusionist theories to both science and common 
sense. 

Finally, the view here presented achieves an aim 
for which logic has long striven in vain. It estab- 
lishes the unity of all forms of thinking without 
effacing the evident distinctions between them. 
Thus in the preceding chapter judgment and infer- 
ence were both seen to be affirmations of causal ty ; 
but the one moved from cause to effect, the other 
from effects to causes. So in this chapter all infer- 
ence has been proved to be essentially inductive ; and 
yet deduction still maintains its peculiar scope and 
value as a linkage of many simple inductions. 



CHAPTER X 

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 

Section i. The Ontological Argument 

In Kant's criticism of the proof of God's exist- 
ence there is one point wherein his insight seems to 
me perfect. He saw that all the other proofs rested 
ultimately upon the ontological argument; if that 
went down, the other proofs must go down with it. 
His reasoning upon this point is too prolix and 
obscure to be quoted here, but it is conclusive. 

Nevertheless Kant denied the validity of the onto- 
logical argument. So did the most of the medieval 
theologians. St. Thomas rejected Anselm's reason- 
ing as unduly passing from the ideal to the real 
order; anticipated, in fact, all of Kant's famous 
refutation of it. And we are told that "Neo-Scho- 
lastics to-day regard the ontological proof as worth- 
less." 1 Among philosophers since Descartes' day, 
Hegel has been its chief defender; but for Hegel 
God is merely the "Totality" of the existent; so that 
his ontological argument seems only to be the sense- 
less tautology that whatever exists, exists. 

It may seem, then, foolhardy on my part to seek 
for what such masters of thought as Anselm, Des- 
cartes and Hegel have sought in vain, and which 
for a century now has been generally abandoned as 
a hopeless task. But all our studies in the preceding 

Terrier, Revival of Scholastic Philosophy, p. 127. 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD I49 

chapters have been a preparation for this work. We 
have restored to its supremacy that principle of cau- 
sality which ever since Hume's day has been either 
discarded or minimized to the utmost. We have 
found by a close scrutiny of all the forms of thinking 
— abstracting, relating, conception, judgment, de- 
duction and induction — that the sole essential func- 
tion of thought is to discriminate between cause 
and effect. Therefore to cancel causation is to cancel 
all thinking, involves the extinction of thought. 
From this vantage ground my present task of 
demonstrating the existence of God becomes a com- 
paratively simple one. I have only to show that the 
conception of a sufficient cause, fully understood, is 
identical with the theistic conception of God. 

The bare statement of this proposition serves to 
show the inherent weakness of the ontological argu- 
ment as it was presented by either Descartes or 
Anselm. Descartes' argument rests ultimately on 
the concept of substance, but that, as we have seen 
in Chapter IV, is a subordinate category dependent 
upon and unintelligible without the causal concept. 
Secondly, it is an ambiguous concept; Descartes 
owns that it has different meanings according as it 
is applied to the finite or the Infinite. Thirdly, he 
lays his proof wide open to the destructive criticism 
of Hobbes and Gassendi, that we have no positive 
knowledge of substance, but only of attributes. 1 No 
wonder that his ontological argument with all these 
defects failed to convince. 



^offding, Hist. Mod. Philosophy, I. p. 225. 



150 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

The case seems still worse with Anselm. His 
proof is stated thus: "We possess the idea of a 
being so great that we cannot conceive a greater. 
But the idea necessarily implies the existence of that 
Being ; for existence, being a perfection, must apply 
to the greatest conceivable Being." 1 But that does 
not prove even that something greater exists. For 
all we know, all things in the last analysis may prove 
to be of the same dimensions. Above all, it does 
not tell whether this something greater is God, devil 
or a lump of matter. 

But my argument is the antipodes to both of these. 
As we have seen, thought cannot deny the existence 
of cause without destroying itself. And the ultimate 
cause must be a sufficient one; otherwise it is no 
cause at all. The only question before us is, then, 
simply this : What characteristics are necessarily in- 
volved in this idea of a sufficient cause? 

And I expect to demonstrate that there are at least 
four such characteristics — namely, Unity, Infinitude, 
Freedom and Love. 

The first essential feature of a sufficient cause is, 
then, Unity. In proof of that I need only appeal to 
the fact, which already I have so often verified, that 
the gist, the soul of a causal relation is that it at 
once integrates and differentiates. Through the 
whole chaos of the existent it draws the sharp line 
of distinction between cause and effect : and the very 
aim of all this distinguishing is that whatever is thus 
divided may be united by the firmest and most endur- 



x De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, p. 164. 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 151 

ing of bonds. No other relation has this function 
of unifying without effacing distinctions. It is the 
peculiar and exclusive prerogative of causality. 

Therefore, a complete and sufficient cause must be 
one. We perceive in Nature a vast variety of causal 
processes, each containing many partial causes or 
factors ; but the greater the multiplicity of these co- 
operating factors, these partial and insufficient 
causes, the greater the demand for some sufficient 
cause binding them all in one process, and binding 
all processes in one cosmic system. From the earli- 
est ages all unspoiled intelligence has recognized that 
truth. Many thousands of years ago, the Egyptians 
expressed it in their hymn to Amon Ra : "The One, 
Maker of all that is; the One, the only One, the 
Maker of existence." 

The second elemental feature of a sufficient cause 
is its infinitude. The proof of that is so simple that 
it may be given in a line or two. Whatever is finite 
is limited by something else, and therefore must, to 
that extent, be an effect ; it may also be a partial 
cause or factor, but never a complete, self-sufficient 
cause. 

But here, too, we must guard against the all-per- 
vading fog of modern metaphysics. For it may be 
objected that in thus declaring the Infinite to be the 
only sufficient cause, we annihilate all finite things by 
depriving them of all the activities and potencies 
that constitute their real existence. On the contrary, 
instead of thus yielding to the most fatal of Spino- 
zistic errors, we build a strong, an insurmountable 



152 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

barrier against it. For, Spinoza's error here — as al- 
most everywhere else — is due to his minimizing, his 
virtual abolition of all causality. He rejects tran- 
seunt causes altogether, and admits of immanent 
causes only in the emasculated sense whereby they 
are deprived of all real activity and reduced to 
merely static or mathematical relations. But here 
we conceive the affirmation of causality in that wide, 
full sense belonging to it as the sole essential func- 
tion of all thought. And in this comprehensive view, 
we find ample room for both infinite and finite causa- 
tion. Our view, then, does not destroy things or 
take away the activities and potencies which consti- 
tute their reality. What thought finds in the world 
is a vast complex of causal processes wherein per- 
ceptible things are factors. Things perform their 
several functions : they act and are acted upon. They 
may have, as some scientists still believe, "resident 
forces" secreted within them; or the forces may be 
but expressions for the uniform modes of action or 
movement characterizing the things. "It all comes 
to the same in the end." No perceptible thing is a 
complete or sufficient cause ; yet things exist and act. 
Thus we seem to have the solution of another 
problem that has long troubled philosophy and re- 
ligion. The Cartesian occasionalism still has a 
strong hold upon many of the most sincere and pro- 
found among theistic thinkers. But let us call a 
metaphor to our aid. A manufacturer is rightly re- 
garded as the maker of the fabrics he sends forth, 
although he makes use of hundreds of other agencies 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 53 

to attain his ends. In a far deeper and truer sense 
than that, God is the only sufficient cause of all ; and 
yet each atom or electron plays its part in the cosmic 
mechanism. 

The third characteristic of a sufficient cause is 
freedom. Whatever is necessitated to act cannot be 
the complete, sufficient cause of that act ; that which 
necessitates it is the real and ultimate cause. 

Here we have another of those truths, simple, as 
obvious as an axiom, and yet befogged by human 
perverseness. Has not the renowned Kant proved 
that a free cause is utter nonsense ? That it contra- 
dicts the very law of causation itself? But look a 
little closer and you will see that this Kantian law 
of causation is a mere trick, an underhanded denial 
of all true causality. Kant had succumbed to Hume, 
given up causation, substituted for it mere sequence 
— a series or procession of events wherein each event 
is cunningly called the cause of the next event in 
the procession. Now it is true that such a series can 
be used for purposes of calculation : knowing the di- 
ameter of a car-wheel and the rate of its revolutions 
I can compute the distance traversed in a given time, 
even if I have no knowledge of the cause producing 
those revolutions. But that gives no warrant for 
denying a cause or for pretending, as Kant does, that 
each revolution is the cause of the next. 

Hegel rightly asserts that all of Kant's antinomies 
are "sham demonstrations." But this third an- 
tinomy, with its spurious law of causation and its 
underhanded denial of all true causality, is the most 



154 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

palpable sham of all. As Hoffding says, Kant failed 
to solve Hume's problem; in my opinion, he ought 
to have owned the fact instead of hiding behind this 
pitiful evasion. 

So skilled a reasoner as Kant, then, could find no 
argument against a free cause, except by virtually 
denying all real causality. But such a denial I have 
proved to be equivalent to the extinction of thought. 
Despite Kant, then, it remains obviously true that a 
sufficient cause must be a free cause. If it is necessi- 
tated to act then what necessitates it is the true and 
ultimate cause. 

Unity, infinitude and freedom, therefore, are dem- 
onstrably three essential characteristics of a sufficient 
cause. There remains now to be proved only the 
fourth characteristic ; but that is of such transcendent 
importance that we give to it a special section. 

Section 2. Ontological Proof of God's Love 
To many my doctrine here will seem pure non- 
sense. But let them rise above the prevailing ten- 
dency to minimize, degrade, even deny causality ; let 
them see the full import of that revelation which it 
is the essential function of thought to make known 
— then they will see that the supreme characteristic 
of an ultimate, sufficient cause is love, action not for 
one's own sake, but for the sake of others. And 
here, too, the proofs are simple and obvious. First, 
whatever acts only to supply some lack or want of 
its own cannot be a complete or sufficient cause ; for 
what was wanting or lacking would be an alien ele- 
ment and the real cause of the action. Any one can 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 55 

see the force of this who can rise above the idea of 
cause as mere senseless mechanism. 

(2) Again, an infinite being lacks nothing that 
it needs : and therefore if it acts at all — causes any 
change or effect — it must act for the sake of others. 
Perhaps we may even extend this rule to finite be- 
ings, so far as to say that all selfish activity is re- 
flex, automatic, that there is no real freedom save in 
self-sacrificing activity. 

( 3 ) My argument can be further fortified by turn- 
ing from what is involved in the thought of cause 
to consider what is involved in the thought of love. 
And here let me recall that new interpretation of the 
passions recently made by Mr. Shand and widely ac- 
cepted by those best fitted to judge. In his sense of 
the term passion — an organized system of emotions 
— there are but two passions, love and hate. And of 
these two love is the fundamental, the universal, and 
above all the only creative one. We grow into love 
naturally ; but we are driven into hate by a kind of 
inversion of our natural life. From the child to the 
old man love multiplies and branches into new direc- 
tions, reorganizing the same old emotions in new 
objects; but hate is an ugly episode from which we 
are in a hurry to escape unless our nature be pe- 
culiarly evil. Hence hate is often a barren passion 
which by destruction of its object destroys itself and 
branches into no new system. 1 

The truth of that and its value for my argument 
are evident. Hate — and, in a measure, indifference 



^ind, October, 1902, p. 493. 



I56 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

also — are destructive. Love is creative. But a com- 
plete cause is essentially creative ; therefore its main, 
its supreme characteristic is love. McTaggart also, 
in his studies of Hegel, reaches the same conclusion 
in regard to the Absolute, more, however, from sound 
intuition rather than any cogency in his "dialectic." 2 

Here, then, we have three strong lines of proof in- 
terwoven into one argument — incontrovertible, at 
least theoretically — showing that the supreme char- 
acteristic of a complete Cause must be self-sacrificing 
love. But from the practical point of view there 
come two weighty objections that must be consid- 
ered. The first and strongest of these is The Prob- 
lem of Evil. 

And I begin by drawing aid from an unexpected 
source — from Hume, who, arch-skeptic as he was, 
had yet a wonderful insight into the depths of 
things. From his Dialogues on Natural Religion I 
quote the following: " Supposing that this person 
(a visitor from another sphere) were brought into 
this world assured on apriori grounds that it was 
the workmanship of such a sublime and benevolent 
Being, he might be surprised at the disappointment, 
but would never retract his former belief if founded 
on any solid argument; since such a limited intelli- 
gence must be sensible of its own blindness and ig- 
norance, and must therefore allow that there may be 
many solutions of these phenomena which will for- 
ever escape his apprehension. But supposing, which 



2 Hegelian Cosmology, § 285. Also Commentary on Hegel's 
Logic, §295. 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 57 

is the real case with regard to man, that this intelli- 
gent creature is not antecedently convinced of a Su- 
preme Being benevolent and powerful, but is left to 
gather such a belief solely from the appearance of 
things, this entirely alters the case; nor will he ever 
find any reason for such a conclusion. He may be 
fully convinced of the narrow limits of his own un- 
derstanding, but this will not in those circumstances 
help him to infer the goodness of the omnipotent 
Power, since he must form his inference from the 
facts he knows, not from what he is ignorant of." 

I answer that Hume's first supposition slightly 
modified is the correct one. It needs modifying only 
to the extent of dropping that false suggestion of 
innate ideas or Kantian a-priorities which it contains. 
Man does come into the world equipped, not with in- 
tuitions, but with the means of attaining to an as- 
sured knowledge of the world as the workmanship 
of an infinite and benevolent Being. For he comes 
endowed with the prerogative of thought; but to 
think is to affirm causality; and as my ontological 
argument shows, we cannot conceive of a complete 
or sufficient cause except as free, one, infinite and 
benevolent. Man having thus attained to a demon- 
strable belief in God might behold many appearances 
that seemed to conflict with it; but, just as Hume 
says, he would never retract it. Or rather he never 
could retract it, except by refusing to think. 

Hume's only error, then, consists in assuming that 
we have no means of gaining a knowledge of God 
save through the appearance of things — a method 



158 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

obviously precarious, varying immensely in its re- 
sults according to the moods and disposition of the 
observer. But that grave error we have now effectu- 
ally eliminated. Our ontological argument has dis- 
closed another method of reaching such knowledge, 
a method so simple and certain that it can be chal- 
lenged only by denying the causal principle, and that 
denial is equivalent to the extinction of thought. 
And now we have the confession of the greatest of 
all skeptics that such an assurance would stand secure 
against all judgments drawn from the appearance of 
things. In fine, it is our belief or disbelief concern- 
ing God which determines our estimate of the good 
and evil in the world ; and not conversely. 

But there is a second objection to be considered. 
If the knowledge of God is thus deeply rooted in the 
very nature of all thinking,- how happens its genesis 
to have remained so long hidden? Why has this 
pure and lofty conception of the Deity so rarely pre- 
vailed in history? Why has it so often been de- 
graded into grotesque or even demonic forms? I 
answer that there are many irrational and evil ten- 
dencies, many diseases of the soul that contend 
against it mightily. 

Take the case of India, for example. The farther 
we go back in her history, the purer and the more 
exalted her religion appears. In the earlier Vedic 
hymns there are no evil divinities ; there is a persist- 
ent impulse to regard all the gods as but so many 
different names for One God. Above all, Vedic re- 
ligion was pervaded through and through by what 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 59 

has been aptly called the apotheosis of sacrifice. Sac- 
rifice was the first principle of morals ; nay, more it 
was the condition upon which the cosmic order de- 
pended. If there should be no sacred offerings, the 
course of the seasons, the succession of days and 
nights, the steadfastness of the firmament would 
cease. 1 "In the beginning of time, the Supreme Be- 
ing created all things by the sacrifice of himself." 2 
In one famous hymn it is said: 3 "So the gods 
through sacrifice gained the right to sacrifice." You 
deride all this as priest-craft, or call it, as Oldenberg 
does, "empty mummery, a disease of Vedic poetry." 
Nevertheless, this poetry preserves the primitive view 
of creation as an act of self-sacrifice on the part of 
the Creator. In the Scandinavian Edda, for instance, 
a similar account of creation is given. In the Zen- 
davesta, Ahura Mazda offers sacrifices to the lower 
divinities whom he has created. 

And Hindu philosophy clearly maps out the road 
which led to the decay of this primitive universal be- 
lief in an Infinite Being creative and self-sacrificing. 
Thus the Sankhya philosophy denies all creation for 
the following reason: "Every intelligent being acts 
from self-interest or beneficence ... a creator 
who has all that he can desire has no interest in cre- 
ating anything. . . . The demi-urge would be un- 
just and cruel." Sankhara, head of the rival school, 
concurs; so we have unanimity on this point. Un- 
happy conditions described in my Philosophy of His- 

'Manu, III. p. 76. 

2 Brhaddevata, Harvard Oriental Series, II. p. 369. 

s Rig Veda, X., pp. 90, 16. 



l60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

tory had sapped the primitive belief; evil-gods had 
arisen ; sacrifice was a priestly farce ; the world was 
so bad and false that its creation would be an unjust 
and cruel act. 

Hindu philosophy thus unveils the process — one 
that went on more unconsciously among less intelli- 
gent races — which undermined the primitive faith. 
Still this primeval conviction was too fundamental, 
too deeply rooted in the very nature of thought, to 
perish utterly. It lives in some of the noblest utter- 
ances of Indian poetry. Listen, for example, to 
Krishna : "Look at me, Arjuna! If I stop from work 
for one moment the whole universe will die. Yet 
I have nothing to gain from the universe. I am one 
Lord. I have nothing to gain from the universe, but 
why do I work? Because I love the world." 

Section 4. The Cosmological Argument 
The ontological proof, then, stands by itself ; it is 
the basis of all other proofs, but needs the support 
of none. The chief value of the cosmological argu- 
ment is, therefore, to ward off misconceptions that 
might imperil theistic belief just as pessimistic views 
and fears of cosmic phenomena undermined the 
faith of India. Let us consider the chief of these er- 
rors in so far as they have assumed philosophic form 
in modern thought. For this purpose, I begin with 
Malebranche, in whom Cartesian orthodoxy cul- 
minated, and from whom there is a direct line of 
genealogy through Berkeley, Hume and Kant to the 
pantheistic monism of the present day. 

(1) Malebranche's primal error — one shared by 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD l6l 

the entire Cartesian school from its founder to 
Spinoza — is that of the Divine Egoism. "God Him- 
self is the single purpose of all divine activities ; what 
He creates He creates for Himself ; He alone is the 
cause and the end of all His creatures." 1 That doc- 
trine dominated the age in so far as it remained 
Christian. It is the core of Augustinian and Cal- 
vinistic theology. According to St. Augustine, the 
expression "mercy" had only a figurative meaning 
when applied to God, because it implies suffering 
through the suffering of others. Spinoza, too, rapt 
"in the intellectual love of God," dreamed of no love 
in return. Jonathan Edwards also, America's one 
philosopher, tempered his exile among the savages 
by ecstatic visions of "God's Infinite Love for Him- 
self." 2 This greatest of American thinkers has been 
well described as "a sort of Spinoza — Mather." 3 
But how strangely this doctrine of the Divine Ego- 
ism contrasts with Krishna's cry as given by the 
Hindu poet : "I have nothing to gain from the uni- 
verse, but why do I work? Because I love the world." 
(2) Malebranche's second great error was his de- 
nial that things could in any proper sense be regarded 
as causes. "To conceive them as secondary or relative 
causes is the most dangerous of all the errors in the 
philosophy of the ancients." It is pure paganism; 
it converts inert things into "little deities." For to 
exist a power of causality is to produce, to create. 
To be a cause is to be God. "If God is to be re- 



'Rech. de la Verite, liv. III. part II. ch. 6. 
2 Riley, American Philosophy, I. pp. 180-184. 
3 Leslie Stephens, Hours in a Library, I. p. 329. 



102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

garded as the absolute, highest and first cause, while 
things are lower, relative and secondary causes, God 
and the world would then differ only in degree; 
things would be causes, only with less power." 

But I have invalidated that plea fully and finally. 
The difference between the causality of God and that 
of things as factors in causal processes is not merely 
quantitative — in degrees of power. There is also an 
infinite difference in the kind or nature of the power. 
For first, Infinite cause is free, nothing compels him 
to create ; but things are not free, their action is ne- 
cessitated. Secondly, the activity of things is lim- 
ited to the production of motion: the Divine activity 
reaches far beyond that narrow range. Third, things 
are unconscious, know naught of the processes 
wherein they function : God is conscious, planned the 
processes and maintains them for the sake of His 
creatures. 

But why, it may be asked, dwell so long upon the 
vagaries of an almost forgotten thinker, instead of 
going on to later and more advanced thought? I 
answer that in philosophy there has been no such ad- 
vance, but rather retrogression. For modern phil- 
osophic thought has been steadily moving in the 
wrong direction; and therefore the greater the 
genius, the toil, the marvelous ingenuity of the 
thinkers, the farther away they have been carried 
from the goal. To what was bad in Cartesian specu- 
lation — its illusionism — Hume and Kant and Hegel 
cling; what was good in it, its firm belief in God, 
they fling aside. Kant surrenders all claim to any 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 163 

reasoned knowledge of God's existence, "in order to 
make room for faith." As for Hegel, even his ad- 
mirers now seem to hardly dispute that his Absolute 
Idea is naught but a travesty upon the theistic con- 
ception of God. McTaggart admits it openly and 
apparently rejoices in it. Professor Calkins more re- 
luctantly says: "But though Hegel over and over 
again asserts, or implies that ultimate reality is an In- 
dividual, and not merely a system of co-ordinated 
parts or an organism, it must be admitted that he no- 
where explicitly outlines the argument for this highly 
significant conclusion. To the present writer, this 
neglect seems the greatest and most inexplicable de- 
fect of Hegel's Logic." 1 

But no one should be condemned for neglecting a 
task that is obviously impossible. And there was 
never a more obvious impossibility than that of con- 
verting Hegel's Idea — a mere "tissue of logical re- 
lations," as Eucken calls it — into the conception of 
God. 

Section 5. The Argument from Design 

Kant undoubtedly succeeded in showing that the 
ordinary argument from design does not fully sus- 
tain the theistic conviction. To make the argument 
adequate and conclusive we must vastly widen its 
scope and tenor. And from our present point of 
view that expansion is readily attained. We do not 
need to go groping here and there for some stray 
indications of contrivance in Nature that seem to 
have some dim analogy to human efforts which, af- 
x Calkins, Persistent Problems of Philosophy, p. 380. 



164 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

ter many trials and errors, finally find some means 
of realizing their ends. On the contrary, we must 
look out upon the countless causal processes of Na- 
ture as inductive science has revealed them to us, 
with all their infinite complexity, even in what seem 
their simplest phases, with all their intricate inter- 
locking of one into another, and of all into the 
scheme of cosmic evolution; and we shall thus find 
going on everywhere around us the constant revela- 
tion of infinite wisdom and love. Thus we shall get 
rid of that imaginary conflict between science and 
religion that has wrought such havoc in the spiritual 
life of Christendom. When the simple difference 
between the Sufficient Cause and causal processes is 
clearly recognized, the old antithesis between 
mechanism and theism will be numbered with the 
superstitions of the past. The more that science dis- 
closes concerning the marvels of nature's mechan- 
ism, the greater will be our knowledge of the Infinite 
Cause that planned, established and maintains it all. 
(1) From this point of view let us consider 
Kant's criticism of the argument from design. 
First, he argues the proof from design can, at most, 
demonstrate only the existence of an architect of the 
world whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of 
the material with which he works, but not of a cre- 
ator of the world to whom all things are subject. I 
answer, that instead of being limited by an in- 
tractable material, God is the author and maintainer 
of those causal processes without which the very ex- 
istence of the material would be impossible. The 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 1 65 

matter which enters into no process has no qualities 
or properties, and therefore is — nothing. Hegel 
spoke the truth there. 

(2) Kant further objects that no one will be bold 
enough to declare that he has a perfect insight into 
the relations which the magnitude of the world 
. . . bears to omnipotence, etc. I answer that such 
a requirement is preposterous. It implies, so far as 
Kant's obscure statement can be understood, that to 
know God as infinite we must know Him as Creator 
of an infinite universe. But of the true God, infinite 
wisdom must be predicated as well as infinite power. 
And it would be the acme of unwisdom to create a 
universe that would thus transcend all possible needs. 



CHAPTER XI 

FREEDOM 

Section i. Deterministic Arguments 

(i) Bradley says: "Free- Will is a mere linger- 
ing chimera. Certainly no writer who respects him- 
self can be called upon to treat it seriously." 
That style of argument, which unhappily is not 
confined to Bradley, I certainly shall not treat 
seriously. 

(2) A more convincing argument is that pre- 
sented by Sir Wm. Hamilton : "A determination by 
motives cannot to our understanding escape from 
necessitation. Nay, were we even to admit as true 
what we cannot think as possible, still the doctrine 
of a motiveless volition would be only casualism; 
and the free acts of an indifferent are morally and 
rationally as worthless as the preordered passions of 
a determined will." 

The stronghold of determinism is in the last clause 
quoted. Indubitably, volitions which have no mo- 
tive are morally and rationally worthless. But the 
fallacy lies in assuming that motives necessitate, 
compel in the same mechanical way that the impact 
of one moving thing impels another to'move. Be- 
lievers in freedom have long protested against this 
assumption as altogether arbitrary, an empty asser- 
tion for which no particle of proof is offered. But, 
from our present point of view, we may go much 



FREEDOM 167 

farther ; we can show this assumption to be not only 
unverifiable, but as in the highest degree improbable, 
irrational and even absurd. It springs from an ob-» 
vious confusion of thought, a crass materialistic 
identifying of the psychic and the physical. Motives 
are thoughts and feelings : they are not things that 
flung into some imaginary balance would act as iron 
weights act. Furthermore, we have the plainest evi- 
dence that mental activities produce their results in 
altogether a different manner and under different 
laws from those that govern the action of things. 
Long ago Lotze pointed out something of this con- 
trast between mechanism and thought. He says: 
"Two impressions, such as the ideas of red and blue, 
do not fuse mechanically ; they do not mix with one 
another, disappear and so form a third — the idea 
violet. But the mind holds them together and yet 
apart, and the idea of their likeness and difference 
arises. ... So given two impressions a and a, 
that which arises from them is not a third impres- 
sion = 2a, but instead there arises the idea of iden- 
tity. Wundt has developed Lotze's view still farther. 
In the realm of the corporeal, he says, a and b are 
units in a common resultant c, including in part a 
new movement, in part transformation into heat, but 
always in such a way that c = a + b. But take 
three musical notes and call their sensation values 
respectively x, y and s: the result will be not 
*" + y ~\-z, but harmony, a greater and qualitatively 
different result. So in motives, let m be a motive 
for, and n a motive against some volition, the result 



1 68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

will be not m-n, but may be a double or three-fold 
m or n. 

What Lotze and Wundt began I have developed 
still further. Their outlook shows an evident differ- 
ence between the methods of mechanism and those 
of thought. But the difference might prove to be 
only a superficial one which concealed an underlying 
identity. But I have conclusively shown that this 
difference is not merely on the surface or incidental, 
but fundamental and all-inclusive. I have proved it 
to be the primary and unfailing prerogative of our 
mentality that it is always able to reverse in thought 
the actual movement of physical processes. The 
course of nature is irreversible from cause to effect ; 
but reason is not thus bound; it moves at will in 
either direction from cause to effects or from effects 
to causes. Moreover, this reverse movement is the 
paramount one, the source of the mind's highest ac- 
tivities and most sublime achievements. As we have 
seen in Chapter, IX, this passage, from observed re- 
sults to their causes, universals or laws, is the secret 
of Induction — and therefore the source of that mod- 
ern science which is lifting mankind to such won- 
drous summits of knowledge and power. 

Finally this double movement of the mind is the 
evident revelation of moral freedom. It makes it 
not only perfectly comprehensible, but also inevitable 
that two alternatives should forever hover over hu- 
man existence. Man has thus always to choose 
whether he shall be moved by momentary impulse, 
as other animals are, or whether he will be guided 



FREEDOM 169 

by his insight into the universal, the infinite, the 
eternal. 

(3) It is, perhaps, some dim glimpse of this 
greatest of all truths, or at least some recoil from 
the absurdity of supposing that human wills were 
moved by impact like billiard-balls, that has led 
many determinists to deny causality altogether in 
any proper sense of the term. Necessitation, they 
urge, is a mere fiction ; it means nothing but invari- 
able sequence and predictibility. Thus Mill says : 
"If necessity means more than this abstract possi- 
bility of being foreseen, if it means any mysterious 
compulsion apart from simple invariability of se- 
quence, I deny it as strenuously as any one." 1 And 
in his Logic he is still more explicit : "We are certain 
that in the case of our volitions there is not this mys- 
terious constraint. We know that we are not com- 
pelled as by a magical spell to obey any particular 
motive. ... It would be humiliating to our pride 
and paralyzing to our desire for excellence, if we 
thought otherwise." 2 But surely that is a pitiful 
evasion, an effort to escape by raising a cloud of 
verbal dust, (a) For it has been proved in Chapter 
VI. that sequence, like any other temporal relation, 
implies causality or necessitation ; without that, suc- 
cession would be utterly meaningless and unintelli- 
gible. (&) Again necessitation is implied in the 
qualifying term, "invariable" ; for what is invariable 
is necessitated to remain what it is. (c) Confronted 



'Mill, Examination, Hamilton's Philosophy, II. p. 300. 
'Logic, Book VI. ch. 2, § 2. 



170 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

by Reid's objection that day is not the cause of night, 
although it is invariably succeeded by night, Mill 
adds another proviso — namely, that the sequence 
must be unconditional. In other words, night is not 
caused by day, because it is caused by something 
else. That seems a curious way of disproving 
causality or necessitation. 

All this serves to show how closely the denial of 
freedom is bound up with the denial of causality. 

(4) Another evasion very much in vogue among 
determinists is an appeal to what they describe as 
"the law of causation." Hoffding, for instance, as- 
sails freedom with an argument the gist of which is 
as follows : "Determinism asserts the continuity of 
the development of consciousness; it asserts the 
causal connection in the department of the will. In- 
determinism, which teaches the existence of cause- 
less acts of the will, absolutely destroys the inner 
connection and the inner continuity of conscious 
life." 1 To this I have three distinct answers to make, 
each final and inappellable. 

(a) Firstly, free volitions are not causeless. 
Hoffding, like most determinists, has simply abol- 
ished all real causation and substituted for it the 
idea of uniform sequence. He says expressly that 
the law of causation is merely derivative, an off- 
shoot from the law of continuity 2 or identity. In 
other words, he abstracts from everything but an 
endless series of motions, each one transformed into 



hoffding, Psychology, p. 346. 

2 H6ffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 



FREEDOM 171 

the next and that into the next, and so on forever. 
Each motion in the series is assumed to be the cause 
of the next succeeding one. And just so he also as- 
sumes that each volition is caused by some preced- 
ing volition, desire or event. One might as well as- 
sert that one revolution of a wagon-wheel was 
caused by the preceding revolution, and not by the 
horse that pulled the wagon and caused all the 
revolutions. 

But if you deny this fantastic scheme, if you in- 
sist that your present volition was caused not by 
some prior volition, but by yourself as a free agent, 
you are accused of teaching that volitions are cause- 
less ! Could anything be sillier than that ? 

(b) The principle upon which Holding's plea 
against freedom is based — namely, the identity of 
cause and effect — is flagrantly false. It is one of 
Hegel's most absurd contentions. And here fortu- 
nately Hegel's reasoning has so little of its usual 
obscurity, that a school-boy might see its emptiness. 
First, he treats of what he designates as Formal 
Causality, that is, the relation of substance and acci- 
dent. The substance and accident are so closely con- 
nected that the accident is implicitly the substance. 
"The house is white" means that the whiteness is the 
house. Surely, as even McTaggart says, "this is 
invalid." 1 Secondly, Hegel turns to his so-called De- 
termined Causation, and here he gives four exam- 
ples. The first of these is that rain makes things 
wet, and that the rain and the wetness are the same 



McTaggart, Commentary on Hegel's Logic, § 170. 



1^2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

water. Hardly any one could fail to see the folly 
of that ; and the other three are no whit better. As 
McTaggart says, there are two fatal objections to 
Hegel's position, and he adds : "Thus we must reject 
Hegel's theory of the identity of Cause and Effect." 1 

But the vogue of this identity doctrine is not en- 
tirely due to Hegel's influence. It is an evident off- 
shoot of the tendency to reduce causality to a mere 
sequence of effects. If, to use my illustration again, 
you regard one revolution of the wagon-wheel as 
the cause of the next revolution, then cause and effect 
do seem almost identical. But if you regard them 
both as effects caused by the horse, the identity 
seems very dubious. 

(c) Hoffding further avers that indeterminism 
destroys the inner connection and continuity of con- 
scious life. And there he does strike a heavy blow 
at a very weak spot in the ordinary defense of t free- 
dom. For heretofore the defenders of free-will have 
at this point oscillated between two mistakes, both 
fatal. On the one hand they have tried to pick flaws 
in that supreme principle of science, the uniformity 
of causation. And, on the other hand, they have 
argued that human volitions formed an exception 
to the great law of uniformity. Both of these posi- 
tions seem to me grievous, even suicidal errors. 
And in their place I substitute the following princi- 
ple as governing the moral life of mankind : 

In the free activity of man, uniformity is not so 
completely realised as in the activities of Nature; 

x Ibid. } p. 174. 



FREEDOM 173 

but this defect is more than counter-balanced by the 
far higher and nobler character of the former uni- 
formity compared with the latter. 

And the gist of that is that freedom alone makes 
individual development possible: and without such 
free development there is no virtue. We must see 
our defects, and believe in our ability to correct them 
if we would climb higher. Determinism bars all de- 
velopment by teaching that our conduct is necessi- 
tated by our characters, by what we have been. On 
the contrary, it is our free action which determines 
our character, checking the evil, developing the 
good. Even deterministic moralists unconsciously 
concede this. Thus Leslie Stephen says : "Virtue im- 
plies a certain organization of the instincts." 1 And 
Bradley utters the same truth in his wild Hegelian 
phraseology: "Be an infinite whole." 2 Mill, too, 
makes the famous concession that "our character is 
in part amenable to our will." In fine, moral prog- 
ress or development is absolutely inconceivable, if 
human life is but a succession of events of which 
each determines the next following, and so on in an 
endless series. Freedom, then, instead of destroy- 
ing, as Hoffding asserts, alone makes possible any 
real connection or continuity of development in 
man's conscious life. 

(5) But the argument invented by Hume seems 
to be the favorite one among recent determinists ; 
on this account I quote it more fully than its intrinsic 

1 Science of Ethics, p. 302. 
'Ethical Studies, Essay II. 



1/4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

importance would otherwise deserve. Hume says: 
"According to the doctrine of liberty or chance this 
connection is reduced to nothing, nor are men more 
accountable for their actions which are designed and 
premeditated than for such as are most casual and 
accidental. ... As the action proceeds from noth- 
ing in him that is durable or constant and leaves 
nothing of that nature behind it, 'tis impossible that 
he can of its account become the object of either pun- 
ishment or vengeance. According to the hypothesis 
of liberty, therefore, a man is as pure and untainted 
after having committed the most horrid crimes as at 
the first moment of his birth. . . . 'Tis only from 
the principle of necessity that a person acquires any 
merit or demerit from his actions, however much 
the common opinion may incline to the contrary." 1 

Remember now that Hume denied all reality, out- 
ward or inward, except that of a series of impres- 
sions and ideas. For such absolute skepticism, free- 
dom is of course inconceivable. Nothing exists but 
the succession of thoughts ; and even between them 
there is no real relation except that they succeed one 
another. 

Nevertheless, eminent philosophers, like McTag- 
gart, Bain, Fullerton — even so eager a realist as 
Hobhouse — are still rehearsing, almost word for 
word, Hume's argument as an irrefragable proof of 
determinism. As Mill said of Hamilton : it is 
enough to make one despair of the human intellect. 

^Hume, Philosophical Works (Edinburgh, 1826), II. pp. 164, 
165. 



FREEDOM 175 

Section 2. The Proof of Freedom 

Determinism, then, seems throughout fallacious 
and sophistical. But is there any positive proof of 
freedom? Or are we left in ignorance concerning 
the whole matter of dispute? I answer that there 
are four impregnable proofs. 

( 1 ) The first starts from the truth demonstrated 
in the preceding chapter that a perfect cause must 
be free. Man, however, as a finite being, can be only 
a limited, partial cause. But this limitation is in no 
wise incompatible with moral freedom ; for he might 
still be a free cause within a limited sphere. And 
no sane man would claim absolute freedom; he 
knows that in most respects he is as much under the 
bonds of mechanism as a brute, a plant, a stone. 

But mark now that these very bonds give to him 
the assurance of his moral freedom. For through- 
out his life, he has had constant experience both of 
the bonds and the freedom, and has thus been quali- 
fied, in the best of all schools, to distinguish between 
them. 

Therein we have the answer to Spinoza's famous 
plea for fatalism — that "the idea men have of their 
liberty arises from this, that they do not know the 
causes of their actions." On the contrary, the whole 
course of life is a prolonged teaching of the differ- 
ence between the bond and the free. Furthermore, 
Spinoza doubly errs, in that he assumes that man 
cannot discern differences unless he knows the causes 
producing them. Men distinguished red from green 



176 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

long before they knew the causes producing that di- 
versity of color. 

(2) Again, to be free is to be responsible. And 
man's responsibility is proved by the simple fact that 
he is a conscious being knowing the nature of his act 
and the trend of its results. No matter how much he 
may be influenced by his environment, by heredity, 
acquired habits or character, he is at least a con- 
scious factor, an accomplice in the evil act. Nothing 
can acquit him of moral responsibility, except posi- 
tive, full proof that he was compelled to so act, could 
not act otherwise. But the determinist has not the 
shred of any such strict proof ; as I have shown, his 
theory rests upon sheer assumptions. Therefore, de- 
terminism is an effort to shuffle the responsibility for 
an evil act upon some one else ; and we are all agreed 
that such an effort adds a new element of unspeak- 
able baseness to wrong-doing, unless we can clearly 
prove our non-responsibility. Indeed, it is this which 
turns misconduct into sin. For, according to deter- 
minism, the responsible party is not the evil-doer 
but the God who made him. 

(3) Another proof is that cardinal fact of the re- 
versibility of thought to which I have already al- 
luded. Martineau has done well in recognizing that 
the relation of the thing to its properties is precisely 
inverted in the relation of the self to its character- 
istics. 1 But the defect of his view is that it does not 
explain why this is so. It leaves this inversion as a 
mere brute fact, a mysterious exception, an entire 



l Types of Ethical Theory, II. p. 39, seq. 



FREEDOM I J? 

antithesis to the entire course of events throughout 
the rest of the universe. Now the modern scientific 
spirit, with its profound passion for unity and 
continuity of development, is revolted by the bare 
suggestion of any such impassable chasm yawning 
at the very center of things. And it is this feeling, 
apparently, which has led so many otherwise able 
scientists into their wild attacks upon the doctrine of 
moral freedom. 

But from our present point of view this difficulty 
is readily overcome. For this law of reversal or in- 
version is not confined to the field of morals alone; 
on the contrary, it extends over the whole realm of 
human thought. It was, in fact, in the field of purely 
intellectual phenomena that I first discovered it. In 
Nature the course of cause and effect is irreversible, 
but human thought knows how to exactly reverse 
this course and thus passes as readily from observed 
effects to their causes as from causes to their effects. 
In fact, as was proved in the chapter upon Induction, 
it is this former movement, that, from observed ef- 
fects to their causes, which forms the real gist, the 
very essence of all acts of reasoning whatsoever ; even 
in the mathematical sciences what are called deduc- 
tions are but ingenious complexes of many induc- 
tions, in each of which a particular fact observed in 
the diagram is transformed into a universal. 

If we turn now from the intellectual to the moral 
realm we find the same supreme law of reversal at 
work. The mere animal is governed solely by its 
antecedents — its inherited character, acquired habits, 



I78 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

environment, etc. Man being also an animal is in 
large degree governed in the same way, that is, by 
his preformed character. But along with this there 
goes the recognition of right and wrong; the man 
sees that his character is bad, or at least stands in 
much need of improvement; he resolves to be the 
master, not the slave of his character, the habits and 
impulses of the past. Thus a complete reversal takes 
place. The man was fatalistically determined by 
his character; henceforth he determines his char- 
acter, within limits modifies and transforms it at 
will. 

There is then in moral freedom nothing excep- 
tional, nothing repugnant to either the teaching or 
spirit of science. On the contrary, the movement of 
the will in moral action precisely corresponds to the 
movement of thought in scientific induction. The 
same law of reversal rules in both hemispheres of 
the mental world. 

(4) That all ethical notions, such as right and 
wrong, duty, merit, desert, remorse, repentance, guilt, 
etc. — in fine, that the entire system of ethics in- 
stantly collapses when the conviction of liberty is 
withdrawn is evident at a glance. There is neverthe- 
less in this argument as a whole, despite its truth in 
details, a fatal flaw ; and I shall confine myself here 
to the pointing out and removal of this great defect. 

The flaw is that the argument, as a whole, is mere 
reasoning in a circle. All acute moralists have been 
more or less aware of this; Kant was especially so. 
He says : "It must be frankly admitted that there is 



FREEDOM 179 

here a sort of circle from which it seems impossible 
to escape. We assume that, as efficient causes, we 
are free, in order to explain how in the kingdom of 
ends we can be under moral laws ; and then we think 
of ourselves as subject to moral laws because we 
have ascribed to ourselves freedom of will. Free- 
dom of will and self-legislation of will are both au- 
tonomy, and, therefore, they are conceptions which 
imply each other; but for that very reason, the one 
cannot be employed to explain or to account for the 
other. 1 Hence, freedom is only an idea of reason, 
and therefore its objective reality is doubtful. . . . 
The conception of an intelligible world is therefore 
merely a point of view beyond the world of sense, 
at which reason sees itself compelled to take its 
stand, in order to think itself as practical. . . . 
Reason would therefore completely transcend its 
proper limits, if it should undertake to explain how 
pure reason, or, what is the same thing, to explain 
how freedom is possible.' ' Kant then admits that 
freedom is incomprehensible, his utmost claim is that 
"we can comprehend its incomprehensibility." 

Nor has any other defender of freedom, so far as 
known to me, ever been able to escape from this cir- 
cle. To Fichte, for instance, freedom is a mere mat- 
ter of faith in a still more irrational form than with 
Kant. "I will be independent, hence I resolve to 
consider myself independent. . . . Hence our phi- 
losophy starts from a faith and knows it." 2 Hegel 



Metaphysics of Morality. 
2 Fichte, Science of Ethics. 



l8o PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

gave up freedom utterly; it never means for him 
anything more than absence of external restraint; 1 
to attack the ethics of Kant and Fichte "was a temp- 
tation which he was never able to resist." 2 

But my doctrine does provide a simple and yet 
sure way of escape from this circle. To conceive 
causality aright we must interpret it not from its im- 
perfect inadequate types in finite existence, but in its 
highest, most perfected form accessible to our knowl- 
edge. Neglect of this second truth was Descartes' 
fundamental error: starting from a dubious con- 
templation of his own self or ego, he is never able to 
rise from that low level to any really logical certitude 
concerning the existence of God, of the world or 
even of himself: everything becomes problematic. 
And philosophy ever since has been infected with 
the same pale and sickly subjectivity. But the 
worthlessness of all these attempts to explain the 
universe from the analogy of the human spirit is 
evinced by two considerations. First, the method 
is an intrinsically fallacious one ; mere analogies can 
give no true induction. Second, this very self, by 
analogy with which everything else was to be in- 
terpreted, has constantly been fading more and more 
into an object of doubt and dispute. But we have 
now found a more secure basis for ethical philosophy 
than that — namely, the knowledge of God as the 
one, infinite, free, self-sacrificing and all-sufficier<t 
Cause. To discredit that conception is impossible; 



^cTaggart, Commentary Hegel's Logic, § 185. 
2 Ibid., § 30. 



FREEDOM l8l 

for its cancellation logically involves the extinction 
of thought. 

Thus we avoid the rock on which the Kantian 
ethics and all similar systems are wrecked. We do 
not try to prove freedom by assuming the reality of 
the moral law, and then to prove the moral law by 
assuming the reality of freedom. But we recognize 
them both as cognate facts, presented in all human 
experience, verified and explained as resultants from 
an Infinite Cause acting for the sake of others. Thus 
we avoid that reasoning in a circle which Kant con- 
fesses to be inevitable in his ethical system. Thus 
the ordinary argument from morality to freedom is 
freed from that fatal flaw of which I spoke. It be- 
comes a sound, a strong convincing proof of freedom 
to argue that if determinism is true, morality is a 
silly superstition. 

Section J. The Moral Order of the World 

The closing words of Sidgwick's great work upon 
the Methods of Ethics are these: "Hence the whole 
system of our beliefs in the intrinsic reasonableness 
of conduct must fall without an hypothesis, unverifi- 
able by experience reconciling the Individual with 
the Universal Reason, without a belief in some form 
or other that the moral order which we see imper- 
fectly realized in the actual world is yet actually per- 
fect. . . . Reject this belief and the Cosmos of Duty 
is reduced to a Chaos and the prolonged effort of the 
human intellect to frame a perfect ideal of rational 
conduct is seen to have been foredoomed to failure.' ' 



1 82 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

But this belief in the moral order of the world is 
by no means a mere "hypothesis unverifiable by ex- 
perience." Such a belief cannot, indeed, be estab- 
lished by generalization from the chequered, con- 
flicting experiences of life; for our estimate of life 
changes with our ever-changing modes ; in one mood 
all is brightness, in the next all is dark and evil. But 
I have now established this belief on solid founda- 
tions by showing it to be logically derived from the 
conception of an Infinite Cause whose activity is for 
the sake of others. To cancel that conception is to 
cancel all causality, and that means the extinction 
of thought. 

You urge, however, that the injustice and inequali- 
ties so evident in life prove that Nature is unmoral, 
indifferent to right and wrong. But Jesus, whose in- 
sight into morals has revolutionized the world, did 
not think so. He takes this seeming indifference, 
this unswerving uniformity of Nature as the very 
symbol and proof of God's love. "He maketh His 
sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth 
rain on the just and the unjust." And we can read- 
ily see the verity and splendor of this unexpected 
view. Nature veils reward and punishment in order 
that true freedom and virtue may be developed. God 
is no slave-driver standing behind us with a lash 
ready for every evil act, and a bribe for every good 
one. If His judgments were "speedily executed," we 
should be as moral as pigs are when they run to the 
trough at the call of the swine-herd. But through 
darkness, suffering and unrequited toil man gains 



FREEDOM 183 

access to all that is sublime and really divine in 
life. 

The belief in the moral order of the world, then, 
must start from our demonstrated knowledge of 
God; not conversely, as Kant supposed. But when 
this belief is thus firmly fixed in the mind, it is con- 
firmed and deepened even by the very facts of ex- 
perience that had seemed to contradict it: and that 
is always one chief test of a genuine scientific dis- 
covery. 

Furthermore, if morality is to endure, it must 
henceforth be' founded upon the solid rock. In a 
more credulous age faith sufficed to keep truth alive. 
But the chief characteristic of modern science is its 
insistence upon the strict verifying of its belief. But 
this insistence upon exactitude and proof, which has 
wrought such wonders in the creation of physical 
science, has had a deadening effect upon the moral 
and spiritual vigor of the age. In the field of ethics 
and religion the increasing demand for definiteness 
and demonstration has gone unsatisfied. The only 
proof offered has been an appeal to "intuitions," 
"ethical postulates," "value- judgments" and other 
empty phrases. 

Thus the very basis of morality is being gradu- 
ally undermined. A secret, almost unconscious but 
deadly doubt, has been diffused even among the com- 
mon people. For they, too, in these days, read and 
reflect. They, too, distrust declamation, assump- 
tions, poetic metaphors, and are demanding proof. 
Hence ethical doubt is spreading among the so-called 



184 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

lower classes. Who indeed have so many seemingly 
good grounds as they for doubting the moral order 
of the world ? 

But against this advancing skepticism we have 
now presented an impregnable defense. First we 
have shown that the deterministic arguments all 
spring from a sophistical denial of causality, by re- 
ducing it to mere sequence. Second, that the four 
positive proofs of freedom all depend upon and de- 
rive their cogency from a proper interpretation of 
the causal principle. It follows that if the now 
widely prevailing mystification concerning this prin- 
ciple were dispelled, doubt of freedom would be- 
come impossible. In other words, we should be as 
immediately conscious of freedom as we are of pain 
or pleasure. 



CHAPTER XII 

DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUl/s EXISTENCE 

Section I. Revelation of the Unseen 

"Souls have worn out both themselves and their 
welcome, that is the plain truth. . . . Like the 
word 'cause,' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop- 
gap — it marks a place and claims it for a future ex- 
planation to occupy." So wrote Professor James; 
and as an after thought, "Some day, indeed, souls 
may get their innings again in philosophy." 1 

Whether it was an intuition or an accident that 
led him thus to link the two terms, cause and soul, I 
do not know. At any rate, it is for me a happy 
augury. As the two ideas fell together, so they will 
rise together; the restoration of the one will be the 
restoration of the other. 

Following, then, the line of thought thus indicated, 
I seek now to prove the existence of the soul. My 
first step is to point out that we have now gained a 
sure, solid, indestructible basis for such a proof. For 
I have proved inductively that thinking, in all its 
forms, is essentially an affirming of causality ; hence 
the denial of the latter involves the extinction of 
thought. But as Hume insisted, no one has ever 
seen, or touched, or otherwise sensed a causal nexus. 
It is a reality imperceptible to the senses, and yet one 
in the presence of which we stand every moment of 
*A Pluralistic Universe, p. 210. 



1 86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

our lives. Thus all thinking has for its very essence 
its supreme purpose and function, the revelation of 
the unseen. 

Mark further the strict scientific method by which 
this insight has been gained. We have made no ap- 
peal to innate ideas, intuitions, a-priori necessities of 
thought — assumptions at once illicit and futile, re- 
sorted to only in sheer despair of finding any real 
proof of what one desires to believe. Instead of that 
I have simply shown that denial here is to abandon 
all thinking whatsoever. 

Again, the only attempts to prove the existence of 
the imperceptible which have made much impression 
upon the modern mind have come from the idealistic 
school. Ingenious fallacies have been devised seek- 
ing to set aside the visible world in order to make 
room for an invisible one. But all such attempts 
have tended to undermine and break down belief in 
the spiritual rather than to build it up. Materialism 
has been greatly strengthened by the absurdity of 
the arguments directed against it. But no such re- 
proach can be urged against my doctrine. It does 
not try to tear down the given world in order to 
construct another out of the ruins. 

This then is one element in our proof. It is not 
by itself decisive; but it is pretty near half the bat- 
tle. He who clearly comprehends what is involved 
in this demonstrated truth that every act of true 
thinking is a revelation of the unseen — that this 
truth is not a casual inference from one phase of 
thought that possibly may be contradicted by other 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 187 

phases — that the one supreme mission of thought 
is to reveal causation and, therefore, the unseen 
— will never surrender his conviction of the soul's 
existence. 

Section 2. The Fundamental Law of Knowledge 
My second proof I will introduce by referring to 
a grave defect even in the rigid orthodoxy of the 
Scottish philosophy of common sense and natural 
realism. There seems throughout a certain dubiety 
concerning any real, verifiable knowledge of the soul 
as such; the stream or series of states is manifest; 
but the soul, at best, is merely suggested. Reid, for 
instance, says : "Our sensations and thoughts do also 
suggest the notion of a mind and the belief of its 
existence and of its relations to our thoughts." 1 Sim- 
ilarly, Dugald Stewart : "We are conscious of sensa- 
tions, thought, desire, volition, but we are not con- 
scious of the existence of mind itself. This is made 
known to us by a suggestion of the understanding, 
etc." 2 So Sir Wm. Hamilton : "There exists no in- 
tuitive or immediate knowledge of self as the ab- 
solute subject of thought, feeling and desire, but, on 
the contrary, there is only possible a deduced, rela- 
tive and secondary knowledge of self as the perma- 
nent basis of these transient modifications of which 
we are directly conscious." Dr. Wayland is still more 
explicit : "Of the essence of mind we know nothing. 
All that we are able to affirm of it is something 
which perceives, reflects and wills; but what that 

inquiry, ch. 2, % 7. 

2 Porter, Intellectual Science, pp. 69, 70. 



l88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

something is which exerts these energies, we know 
not." 1 

It seems a rather doleful outlook. Here we have 
an array of what are generally regarded as the most 
eminent defenders of the soul's reality. And at the 
critical point they all fail us entirely. They virtually 
surrender everything by conceding that we have no 
direct, definite knowledge, but only a mere sugges- 
tion, a relative, secondary apprehension of the self 
as fading away into the unknowable cause of our 
psychic states. To all intents and purposes these 
champions of the soul's existence seem to concur 
with Mill's view that the mind is but a series of feel- 
ings "with a background of possibilities of feeling." 

Their virtual surrender of selfhood arose, I think, 
from lack of any definite view of the nature of 
knowledge. Under the leadership of Reid they had 
dealt heavy blows upon the old doctrine that knowl- 
edge was a sort of picturing process ; but the snake 
had been scotched not killed ; they had formulated no 
other theory of knowledge to put in the place of the 
one overthrown. And as always happens in such 
cases, the old error still lingered on, vague, obscure, 
but all the more potent for evil because unrecog- 
nized. This, I may note in passing, is the explana- 
tion of the fact noted by Hamilton that Reid, after 
having triumphantly refuted the representation the- 
ory, so frequently relapses into the very error he had 
repudiated. Hamilton, in view of these inconsist- 
encies, is inclined to doubt whether Reid was a Nat- 



'James, Psychology, I. pp. 347, 348. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 1 89 

ural Realist at all. But that is unjust. Reid's tem- 
porary defections simply exemplify the truth at- 
tested by all experience that mere negation avails 
little or nothing. To really exterminate an ancient 
error, you must put something better in its place. 
That Reid failed to do in regard to the theory of 
knowledge ; hence, his unconscious relapses. 

The same defect pervades the would-be spiritual- 
ism of the Scottish school, reducing it to an attenu- 
ated, merely verbal form that does not essentially 
differ from the doctrine of Hume, Mill, Bain and 
other theorists, that the self is nothing but the sum, 
series or stream of mental activities. To show that, 
we have only to recall what has been demonstrated 
in these pages to be the true theory of knowledge. 
That theory is based upon my now verified thesis 
that all thinking is a relating of cause and effect; 
from this there is derived as an evident corollary the 
fundamental law of knowledge — namely, that we can 
really know causes only through their effects, and 
conversely only effects through their causes. Now 
the writers just quoted ignore the second half of this 
fundamental law. To say as they do that we know 
the soul only through its activities — perception, rea- 
soning, volition — is not an altogether false assertion. 
But it is only a half-truth, and therefore a fatally 
one-sided, mutilated and misleading view. For it 
keeps out of sight the other half, the complementary 
truth that we can have no real knowledge of our 
mental activities except by relating them to their 
cause, the agent that acts. To neglect this double 



190 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

demand is the most insidious of all errors; for no 
other falsehoods are quite so deceptive as those that 
contrive to tell one-half the truth and omit to tell 
the other half. You may say, then, that we know 
the self only through its activities, provided you add 
that we know the activities only through their rela- 
tions to the unitary, abiding self. Then only do you 
tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

Note further the illimitable sweep of this law of 
knowledge. It spreads over both worlds. Already 
I have shown that neglect of it is the source of that 
illusionism that has blighted modern philosophy : the 
thing by itself is indeed unknowable, just as Kant 
said, but so also is the attribute or quality by itself. 

But our present theme is to show the full bearing 
of this law upon the problem of the soul's existence. 
For that purpose let us consider the argument of 
Kant, who is universally recognized as the chief 
agent in the banishment of the soul from modern 
philosophy. His claim is this : "I think is therefore 
the only text of rational psychology, from which it 
must develop its entire system." 1 But see how bare 
and jejune is this Kantian conception of thinking 
which is to settle the question of the soul's reality. 
( 1 ) Thinking, in Kant's sense of the term, is a mere 
process of illusion; it reveals nothing but false ap- 
pearances. (2) Thinking is throughout, from first to 
last, naught but a self-contradictory process; all its 
affirmations are figments which the human mind is 
compelled to accept as true or valid ; and yet is com- 



^ritique of Pure Reason, p. 306. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 191 

pelled to believe them untrue or invalid. (3) Think- 
ing, according to Kant, is the acme of all vagueness 
and vacancy. "All judgments," he tells us, are 
"nothing but the mode of bringing given representa- 
tions under the objective unity of apperception." 
That is, the one essential function of thought is to 
unify sensations. But unity is the loosest, the most 
indeterminate of terms. There are no two objects 
in the universe so discrepant and contrary to each 
other that they cannot be united in some way or 
other by thought. (4) Again, Kant strips from 
thought all but its lowest and meanest characteris- 
tics. He magnifies volition immensely; but it does 
not occur to him that right thinking involves the 
hardest, noblest, rarest of all acts of the human will. 
Kant's real God is the Good Will ; while thought is 
only the clumsy tying of fictitious bundles. 

"We have here before us," Kant continues, "a pre- 
tended science raised upon the single proposition, 
/ think." But is it any wonder that such a concep- 
tion, or rather caricature of the soul's activities, as 
he gives, should not lead to any assurance either of 
the soul's nature or of its existence ? 

But abandon this pessimistic view; contemplate 
the activities of the soul as they really are; recall 
that power of reversal whereby thought passes back- 
ward from present effects to their causes in the dis- 
tant part, forward to foresight of what is yet to 
come, and upward to the Infinite Cause of all ; con- 
sider how thought has transformed the face of Na- 
ture and unveiled her incalculable resources for the 



I92 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

use and enjoyment of mankind. Listen to Kepler's 
cry, "O God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after 
Thee." Look upon even the demoniac aspects of 
thought — the sin and sorrow of the world. Remem- 
ber, above all, my proof that the supreme mission of 
thought is to reveal the unseen. Such knowledge of 
the soul's activities gives knowledge of its nature 
and its existence; and the converse is equally true. 

But all that, you object, does not prove that the 
soul exists as a substance. That I cheerfully con- 
cede. The category of substance and attribute is a 
subordinate, derivative one, as; I have shown in 
Chapter IV ; if you make it the ultimate one you are 
at once entangled in the contradictions that ruined 
the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. 
The one ultimate, all-inclusive category is that of 
cause and effect. That alone does not make percepti- 
ble things the type or standard of reality to which 
all else must somehow conform. That alone permits 
of different degrees, beginning with its perfect type 
in God ; then descending to man, whose free causal- 
ity is limited to action of the mind upon the body, 
then to other animals, plants, inorganic things, all 
of these being imperfect causes — that is, factors in 
causal processes. 

In fine, the apparent force of Kant's argumenta- 
tion against the existence of the soul is wholly due 
to the fact that he was contending against an im- 
proper and most misleading conception of the soul 
as substance. The word substance is so constantly 
and familiarly applied to spatial things, that it un 7 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE I93 

avoidably suggests them. But drop this misleading 
term. Conceive the soul under the category of cause 
— an imperfect finite cause indeed, but still as free, 
conscious, rational, closely akin to the causality of 
God. Then you will see that Kant's argument is but 
a beating of the air. 

Section j. Monism 

But there are still other difficulties to be sur- 
mounted. Having passed beyond Kant, we are im- 
mediately confronted by the monism of his succes- 
sors. Kant himself had suggested that the mysteri- 
ous unknown concealed behind the phenomena of 
sense might possibly be identical with the unknown 
in ourselves. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel hastened 
to develop this suggestion ; although their great mas- 
ter had expressly warned them against the perils of 
such a procedure: it was "the forbidden fruit" on 
the tree of knowledge. Hence rose the monistic view 
of selfhood which Hegel formulated in one brief 
sentence : "The truth is that there is only one reason, 
one mind, and that the mind as finite has no exist- 
ence." 

But fortunately we do not have to cope here with 
that myriad of logical and verbal sinuosities behind 
which this monism entrenched itself. It is enough to 
point out the two fallacies upon which this surpris- 
ing doctrine rests ; and they are so obvious that the 
task is an easy one. The first is that which I have 
already described as the fallacy of the Whole and its 
Parts. The idealistic monist begins by dissolving 



194 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

the spatial universe into false appearances; its esse 
is percipi; it has no independent reality, but exists 
only in the infinite consciousness or mind. Space 
and all spatial relations being thus wiped out of ex- 
istence, we are then told that the Divine Mind is an 
infinite Whole made up of innumerable millions of 
parts ; but how that which is unextended can be thus 
divisible into parts, we are left to conjecture. 

It may be objected that Hegel guards against this 
absurdity by conceiving the Infinite not as a mechani- 
cal, but an organic Whole. The totality is not, as 
Spinoza regarded it, a mere aggregate sum; it is a 
living whole united with its modes by an organic 
tie. But that increases, instead of obviating the dif- 
ficulty. For, you may pulverize an inorganic thing, 
a rock, for instance, and leave the parts intact; but 
to pulverize an organism is to destroy both the life 
of the whole and that of the parts. 

A false view of self-consciousness is the second 
fallacy. Just as Hume ignored everything in con- 
sciousness except the series of states, the Hegelian 
ignores everything but the self in an impossible re- 
lation to itself. The self as subject and the self as 
object, though different, are identical. Or as Hal- 
dane enthusiastically asserts : "The deepest and most 
fundamental of all relationships appears to be that of 
being object to a subject. Its discovery is the begin- 
ning of wisdom. . . . It is the wicket-gate to the 
pathway to Reality." For, as he further asserts, it 
solves that dark problem : Why is the Infinite Mind, 
the Absolute, compelled to thus finitize itself? The 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 1 95 

answer given is, that it is the very nature of Mind 
or Thought to split itself into contradictory abstrac- 
tions or moments, and then to unify these contradic- 
tions on a higher plane. To be self-conscious, the 
Absolute subject must transmute itself into an ob- 
ject, something different from and yet identical with 
itself. 1 And so far as can be gathered from Hegel's 
rather obscure utterances, Haldane, I think, has here 
correctly stated the Hegelian view. 

But such a view of consciousness is saturated 
through and through with that most ruinous of all 
errors which I have described in Chapter III. as the 
fallacy of resemblance. That fallacy is the survival 
in human reasoning of the animal's capacity for not- 
ing likeness and unlikeness and of being guided 
thereby. But judgments thus made are essentially 
incoherent and self-contradictory; for everything is 
like and not like everything else. Nevertheless, 
Hegel's theory of self-consciousness — and that of 
Schelling and Fichte also — was based upon this fal- 
lacy of resemblance. Their minds kept revolving, 
with an almost ludicrous solemnity, around the fact 
that in self-consciousness the subject and the object 
were like and not like, identical and different. Re- 
member, too, that this is the finale of the Hegelian 
philosophy; the long series of self-contradictions 
ends at last with the discovery that in self-conscious- 
ness subject and object are unmistakably the same. 

But I have shown how these mere feelings of like- 
ness and unlikeness, so indeterminate, incoherent 

haldane, Pathway of Reality, I. pp. x. and 32. 



I96 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

and self-contradictory, can be converted into true re- 
lations, definite, precisely comparable and therefore 
useful as material for reason to work upon. To thus 
transform them we need only to specify that upon 
which the likeness or unlikeness depends; in other 
words, whence it results. And the more exact our 
determination of the cause upon which the likeness 
or unlikeness depends, the more exact and verifiable 
our knowledge becomes. 

Now apply this distinction between vague feelings 
of resemblance and exact causal relations to the ques- 
tion before us. You define self-consciousness, after 
the monistic fashion, as the subject's contemplation 
of itself as an object different from and yet identical 
with itself. I answer that you have really said noth- 
ing. Your definition does not define. On the con- 
trary, it doubles, trebles the indefiniteness, reduces 
consciousness to something utterly inexplicable and 
self-contradictory. But for this definition substitute 
a causal one. Define self-consciousness as the self's 
knowledge of itself as the cause of its own activities. 
Then light begins to dawn. Both the self and its 
activities are illumined. For while this definition is 
exact in that the precise relation between the con- 
scious self and its object is described, yet ample room 
is left for the diversities of causality so evident in 
a human self. Very often this causality is at its mini- 
mum; the mind surrenders itself to idle musing, 
blind, automatic association, but even then it vaguely 
recognizes itself as cause, as able to rise from mere 
dreaming to sterner activity. And so there are quick 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 1 97 

transitions from this lower level of consciousness to 
loftier ones, to patient, persevering toil, to hard, bit- 
ter struggle against temptation, to prolonged battle 
with defects of character, and above all to a divine 
self-sacrifice for the sake of others. In fine, con- 
sciousness reveals not a causality vague and undiffer- 
entiated, but a causality of many degrees or grades 
as distinguishable as the heights of hills or moun- 
tains. 

Compare now this view of consciousness with one 
of the sanest and most recent versions of the subject- 
object hypothesis, the one given by that very able and 
candid thinker, Professor Ward. The keynote of his 
discussion is this : "We find not a dualism of mind 
and matter, but a duality of subject and object in 
the unity of experience." Note first that there is a 
tinge of mystification in the very terms used; for 
subject and object are words so vague as to be inter- 
convertible. What Ward calls object, Duns Scotus, 
Descartes and others still later called subject; even 
Locke speaks of the object of thought as the subject 
of thought j 1 and something of this usage, this inter- 
change of the two terms, still lingers in ordinary 
speech. But more important than this is Ward's 
frank confession that he cannot define the relation 
between these two ambiguous and confluent terms. 
All that he can say is "that it is that relation of sub- 
ject to object and of object to subject in virtue of 
which they are severally subject and object." Does 
not that seem the climax of tautology and emptiness ? 

"Locke, Essay, Book II. ch. 8, § 7. 



I98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

And in the same mystifying strain he adds : "As the 
absolutely ultimate relation in experience, we can 
either say that it is inexplicable, or that it needs no 
explanation, or we may entertain the notion of an 
Absolute in whom the unity of experience outlasts 
the duality." 1 

In this midnight of uncertainty, one star alone 
seems to shine forth. We are told : "But one thing, 
I think, we must not do; we must not attempt to 
bring this relation of subject and object under the 
category of cause and effect. " 2 No hint of any rea- 
son is suggested for excluding that principle of 
causality which I have proved to be the one essential 
function of all thinking, and which seems to throw 
so much light upon this special question of self-con- 
sciousness ; further, it is admitted by our author that 
no other satisfactory explanation can be found ; and 
yet at all costs this causal explanation must be ex- 
cluded. Ward is certainly a strong witness for the 
truth emphasized throughout this volume that in- 
ability to solve Hume's problem has engendered a 
sort of philosophic grudge against the causal princi- 
ple, the essence of all thinking and the source of all 
reasonable explanation. 

The outcome of all such speculation is inevitable. 
"There is not a subjective and objective before us, 
but there is what we find to be an indivisible subjec- 
tive-objective . . . one thing which no effort of 
thought can construe as really two." 3 In plainer 

Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. p. 117. 

2 Ibid. 

z Ibid., p. 200. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE I99 

words, consciousness is naught but an endless re- 
hearsing of the old puzzle about identity and differ- 
ence, likeness, and unlikeness. The world, as well 
as consciousness, is an illusion. Space and time are 
mental figments. "And if we allow the conception 
of a Supreme Mind and First Cause to be valid at 
all . . . really, fundamentally, ultimately, we 
shall have God only and no mechanism." 1 In fine, 
the visible universe is abolished in order to make 
room for its Creator. 

Idealistic monism, then, in all its varieties is the 
product of two great fallacies. The first is the fal- 
lacy of the whole and its parts. The Infinite Mind 
is envisaged as an extended substance divisible into 
countless parts or "momentary fragments/' as Royce 
prefers to call them. That I think is the absurdest 
paradox ever invented by human perverseness. It 
sounds like a survival of the Hindu legend men- 
tioned in Chapter X, that the Supreme Being di- 
vided himself into parts out of which to create the 
world; but that was meant as a poetic symbol for 
the divine self-sacrifice ; idealistic monism appears to 
take it literally. The second fallacy is that of like- 
ness and unlikeness, identity and difference. That is 
a reversion going even farther backward than to 
Hindu legends. It reverts, as we have seen, to that 
animal stage of life which is guided not by reason- 
ing from cause to effects or from effects to cause, 
but by vague association of similarities. Either 
of these fallacies by itself would be enough to 

1 Ibid., p. 274. 



200 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

destroy a much more plausible hypothesis than 
monism. 

The belief in the soul's existence, then, has noth- 
ing to fear from idealistic monism. Rather it is 
strengthened and confirmed by the manifest weak- 
ness and folly of the arguments directed against it 

Section 4. Parallelism 

But the belief in the soul's existence is confronted 
by another foe, the doctrine of parallelism. Let us 
take as an able exponent of this doctrine Professor 
Fullerton. Two agencies so diverse as the physical 
and the psychic, he insists, cannot be united in one 
causal process. "The attempt to patch up a defective 
machine with what is immaterial is, indeed, absurd. 
Such a patch cannot be put on, such a joint cannot 
be inserted in any sense of the words that has a sig- 
nificance. The machine remains defective; there is 
an unfilled gap." 1 He re-echoes Clifford's reference 
to the railway-train, the two parts of which were 
linked together by ideas instead of iron couplings, 
"the bond of union between the two parts being the 
sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker 
and the guard." 

But this great train, weighing perhaps a thousand 
tons, is pulled along for thousands of miles, over 
high mountains, by a slender iron rod linking it with 
the locomotive. And yet this iron rod is but an ag- 
gregate of atoms, each atom entirely distinct and 
separated from its nearest neighbor by a vast dis- 

^etaphysics, p. 522. 



201 



tance relatively to its size. What holds this host of 
disconnected atoms so firmly together despite the 
immense force tending to pull them apart ? Experi- 
ence, you say, tells us that the iron rod has this 
power or property, and with that we must be con- 
tent. But a still more familiar and constant experi- 
ence assures us there is also interaction between our 
volitions and our bodily organs. Nevertheless, you 
flout at that as absurd; thought and things are too 
diverse to interact. 

(2) Or do you reply with the stale saying that 
science does not pretend to explain, but merely to de- 
scribe. That is a shallow and a futile evasion. For, 
first, if everything is so wrapt in utter mystery that 
science does not attempt to explain anything, then 
you cannot deny the interaction of mind and body 
on the ground of its inexplicability. And secondly, 
without some explanation, description is impossible. 
To describe any fact aright, you must analyze it into 
its elements, convert its particulars into universals 
and do much else that goes far toward explanation. 

(3) Another significant fact is the strict limita- 
tion of the mind's potency to action upon the body. 
No thought, volition or sentiment of ours can di- 
rectly cause even a leaf to stir, much less pull Clif- 
ford's railway train over high mountains. But every 
atom of matter seems endowed with miraculous pow- 
ers — attraction, affinity, etc. — of acting upon all 
other atoms. The mind in this respect seems feeble- 
ness incarnate. Yet this limitation is an aid instead 
of an obstacle to my argument. For if the human 



202 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

mind is thus devoid of potencies which even the 
atoms possess, it certainly cannot be the Absolute 
Mind working within us, as Hegel, Haldane, 
Royce, etc., would have us believe. It is an indi- 
vidual mind, potent only in a limited sphere ruling 
only within the body. 

(4) There is a great mass of rather trivial dispu- 
tation between the friends and foes of parallelism — 
thrusts and counter-thrusts with blunted sword- 
points — upon which I need not dwell ; they are given 
in almost any recent text-book. But there is one fea- 
ture of the discussion that seems to have escaped at- 
tention. Bain, for example, is a very staunch de- 
fender of the parallelistic view. He says : "The only 
tenable supposition is that mental and physical activi- 
ties proceed together as undivided twins." 1 Thus 
he virtually abolishes thought as anything more than 
one "side" or "aspect" of brain motions. But that 
carries him not one step nearer to, but rather much 
farther away from any genuine realism. In his opin- 
ion the brain motions are altogether illusory, mere 
possibilities of sensation. 2 In fine, both of Bain's 
undivided twins are pure hallucinations. He has 
landed in utter nihilism. 

Hoffding is another example. The Identity hy- 
pothesis which he accepts "regards the mental and 
material worlds as two manifestations of one and the 
same being both given in experience. . . . But 
what kind of being is this? Why has it a double 
form of manifestation, why does not one suffice? 

1 Min'd and Body, p. 132. 
2 Mental Science, p. 198. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 203 

These are questions which lie beyond the reach of 
our knowledge." 1 

(5) But the paramount consideration is that 
parallelism is a product of the denial of causality. 
Fullerton naively bears witness to this. Only in 
the physical system, he asserts, "does there obtain 
an order which we call that of cause and effect. 
. . . The coming into being of mental phenomena 
is causeless." 2 Minds indeed are active, but: "The 
notions cause and activity, effect and passivity must 
be carefully divorced when we concern ourselves 
with an exact description of the changes which take 
place in the material world." 3 A long chapter is de- 
voted to that distinction which amounts to this; 
physical causation means uniform sequence, mental 
activity means action governed by purpose. Thus 
genuine causation is eliminated from both worlds; 
mental activity is expressly declared to be causeless 
and physical activity is but an endless series of ef- 
fects without a cause. 

Not all parallelists are so explicit as Fullerton here 
is; but all are dominated by the same debased con- 
ception of causality. Like Hoffding, they are en- 
tangled in "the identity-hypothesis"; they conceive 
cosmic phenomena as a mere flow of abstractions — 
motions, events, etc. — each consequent being but a 
transformation of its antecedent, which by courtesy 
is called its cause. Indeed it is inconceivable that 
any sane thinker should — in the face of all experi- 

^sychology, pp. 66, 67. 
2 Metaphysics, p. 524. 
3 Ibid., p. 234. 



204 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

ence — deny the causal influence of our thoughts upon 
our actions, unless he had previously abandoned be- 
lief in all causation whatsoever. 

But your disproof of parallelism, it may be said, 
does not prove the soul's existence. True; but it 
removes a great barrier. It shows that parallelism 
is a mere mystification due to the temporary obscur- 
ing of the principle of causality, the very essence of 
all thinking. Philosophy at present is like a mariner 
who cannot find the harbor on account of the fog. 
Let the fog lift, and there the harbor lies in plain 
sight before him. 

Section 5. Animism 

But this belief in the soul, it will be objected, is a 
mere survival of savage animism. On the contrary, 
it is the remedy for the animistic disease — a malady 
prevailing far more widely than our objector dreams 
of. For animism consists essentially in materializing 
the spiritual, in ascribing to the invisible properties 
and relations that can belong only to visible, extended 
things. And that disease is just as common among 
philosophers as among savages. Hegel's doctrine of 
the organic Whole and its parts, for instance, is thor- 
oughly animistic; he ascribes to the spiritual what 
can belong only to extended things. And almost all 
the objections urged against the soul's existence are 
based upon some such materialistic, metaphorical 
way of conceiving the spiritual. Take, for example, 
the most difficult question of all : Where is the soul ? 
Is it located, as Descartes supposed, in the pineal 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 205 

gland ? Or is it diffused throughout the whole body ? 
Or is it, as a very able Neo-Scholastic insists, no- 
where P 1 

But consider this question from our present point 
of view. It is obviously impossible to determine the 
spatial relations of a spirit. But we are not thus 
driven into Kantian agnosticism. For I have proved 
that the soul is a free cause, but limited in its action 
to the body. And it is this causal relation which is 
the essential, the supremely significant element in all 
our thinking and knowing. The question of the 
soul's location is a minor, irrelevant one; the failure 
to answer it leaves our true knowledge of the soul 
intact. 

Nor am I disturbed by the reflection that this view 
is akin to that of St. Thomas of Aquin. 2 For true 
philosophy has ever been a prolonged effort to attain 
unity of thought without effacing real distinctions. 
Both Plato and Aristotle sought that goal, the one 
swerving toward idealistic, the other toward mate- 
rialistic monism. In the Middle Ages that effort 
continued, and in the labors of St. Thomas reached 
a degree of excellence which, considering the diffi- 
culties which had then to be encountered, is a marvel 
of genius. Even Hoffding says: "The greatest 
merit of the Middle Ages lies in its absorption in the 
inner world of the life of the soul. . . . No won- 
der that a fine and deep sense of the inner life de- 
veloped." 3 

1 Perrier, Revival of Scholastic Philosophy, p. 123. 
2 De Wulf, Hist. Med. Philosophy, p. 339. 
3 Hist. Modern Philosophy, I. p. 5. 



206 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

But modem speculation has neglected one-half of 
the true philosophic task. In its eagerness to unify 
it has effaced those vital distinctions without which 
thought becomes a mere welter in the mire of con- 
fusion and doubt. From this sad plight there is no 
possible escape save through the doctrine of these 
pages. There is no other way of solving philosophy's 
problem — to unify without effacing distinctions. 
For causality in the only relation which at once dis- 
tinguishes and unites: or rather, in order to unite. 
Thus we have been enabled to preserve such price- 
less distinctions as those of God and the world, the 
seen and the unseen, body and soul, uniformity and 
freedom — without loss, aye, with increase of unity. 
My doctrine is then dualistic, in that it accepts that 
dualism of causality that unifies everything. 

And thus philosophy gains what it never has had 
heretofore, an indestructible basis. All thinking be- 
comes impossible, if we cancel causality; and the 
causal conception in its fullness is identical with the 
theistic conception of God. We have then no need 
of innate ideas, postulates, or Kantian a-priorities. 
As Amiel said, the one thing needful is to know 
God. 

Section 6. Immortality 

I have shown that all forms of true thinking are 
ultimately reducible to a relating of cause and effect ; 
that is thought's sole essential function. Thus the 
skepticism so rife in the last two centuries, is swept 
aside. The imperfection of the senses must, of 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL S EXISTENCE 20J 

course, be conceded ; they do not reveal things in all 
respects precisely as they are. But scientific thought 
has overcome these illusions by unveiling their 
causes. And to those followers of Kantor Hegel 
who still exaggerate this imperfection of sense into 
a universal illusionism, I have made the sufficient 
answer that all such extravagance is tantamount to 
the extinction of thought. 

The first truth concerning immortality, inferrible 
from this view, is that all animistic features must be 
eliminated from our conception of the soul. In other 
words, the soul must be regarded not as substance 
but as cause. For, as was shown in Chapter IV, 
§ i, substance is a subordinate and derivative cate- 
gory : it normally suggests material things and can 
only metaphorically be used in a wider sense: thus 
it misleads. Even Descartes grants that it can be 
applied to both God and finite things only in two 
very different senses. The Cartesian view of God 
as substance ended necessarily in Spinozistic pan- 
theism. In precisely the same way, the view of the 
soul as substance ends in animism — the materializing 
of the spiritual. 

The religion of India is a glaring example of this 
animistic decline. From its early Vedic purity, 
which knew nothing of metempsychosis, it lapsed 
into a conception of the soul as some strange sub- 
stance or stuff hidden sometimes in a human 
body, at other times in a fish, a worm, an insect, a 
tree or a stone. And the natural reaction from this 
animism led to the Buddhistic denial of the soul 



208 PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

as aught but a series of evanescent thoughts and 
feelings. 

But animism has by no means been confined to 
savage races or to India. Kant's whole argument 
against any theoretic proof of the soul's existence 
hinges expressly upon this substance-view thereof; 
recall for instance his famous ''elastic ball" conten- 
tion, and Hegel's theory of the human mind as a 
fragment, a sort of single cell in the Absolute organ- 
ism, is explicit animism through and through. 

We must then put aside this bewildering animism 
and interpret the soul causally, that is, as the cause 
of the psychic activities, thought and volition. 

The second truth to be emphasized is that what- 
ever is a true cause — that is, irreducible and unitary 
— is imperishable. 

All modern science proclaims that truth. The 
things we see, even the "everlasting hills," are com- 
plexes that change incessantly, decay and vanish. 
But the true unitary causes of these changing com- 
binations, the elements which by their mutual attrac- 
tions and repulsions produce and destroy these un- 
stable complexes — these abide indestructible. If 
then the self is a unitary cause even to the same 
extent that the physical elements are causes, it is 
imperishable. 

But a three-fold proof has already been given that 
the soul has such causality in a far higher degree 
than any mere thing. First, it has been shown in 
these pages that the knowledge of causality is a reve- 
lation of the unseen, an enlargement of power im- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL'S EXISTENCE 200, 

possible to any material object. Second, thought 
has a double movement whereby induction becomes 
possible and thus Nature's hidden processes are laid 
open for human use. Third, the soul has been 
proved free and thus in closest kinship with the 
Infinite Cause. Surely then it is stupid to deny to 
such a cause as the soul an imperishableness we con- 
cede to unconscious things. 

And I now add still another proof, simpler and 
final. Of nothing has the mind so intimate a knowl- 
edge as of its own thoughts and volition ; indeed, ac- 
cording to idealism, it knows nothing else. But uni- 
versally the mind has discriminated between itself 
and its transitory states, as one cause and many 
effects. Therefore if this discrimination is uncertain 
or false, much more so must be its discriminations 
between other things far less intimately known. It 
follows that the mind has no power of truly dis- 
criminating between cause and effect. Thus you 
have again made all thinking impossible. Your 
creed must be nihilism and the extinction of thought. 

In this proof of immortality, so long sought in 
vain, we have another instance showing the illimit- 
able scope and value of our fundamental principle. 
It has been demonstrated that all thinking has one 
essential function, that of causal conviction. It fol- 
lows as an evident corollary therefrom that the 
whole realm of true thought and knowledge, despite 
its superficial diversities, must have so firm a unity, 
so perfect a solidarity that to cut away one part is 
to destroy the whole. And what was thus inferrible 



2IO PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE 

as a corollary, we have in this volume verified as a 
fact. 

Furthermore this new view partially justifies those 
frantic appeals to faith which many thinkers are now 
making. Their faith is not a mere blind, foolish 
credulity ; it is a dim, unreasoned insight into such a 
unity and interdependence of all truth that the ruin 
of one part is the ruin of the whole. Kant, for ex- 
ample, believes in the moral law, and thus manages 
"to make room for faith" everywhere else. So the 
Neo-Hegelian rests every thing upon faith in "an 
articulated system" or "Totality," without being 
able or even seriously attempting to prove its reality ; 
it hangs in the air like Kant's system of a-priorities 
or Leibniz' pre-established harmony. 

But this great gap is now closed. The perfect 
unity and solidarity of truth throughout the whole 
realm of knowledge is an inevitable corollary from 
the now demonstrated principle that the sole essential 
function of thought is to relate cause and effect. 



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